H119-01
NOAA’s National Water Model: From V2.1 Operations to Future Enhancements in V3.0
Friday, 11 December 2020: 07:00
Virtual
Brian A. Cosgrove, NOAA/NWS Office of Water Prediction, Silver Spring, MD, United States, David J Gochis, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, Thomas Martin Graziano, NOAA, NWS Office of Water Prediction, Silver Spring, MD, United States, Edward P Clark, NOAA, NWS Office of Water Prediction, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States and Trey Flowers, NOAA/NWS Office of Water Prediction, National Water Center, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States
Abstract:
The National Water Model (NWM) has been running in National Weather Service (NWS) operations since August of 2016. Producing 24x7 guidance on streamflow, soil moisture, snowpack and other hydrologic components, the NWM supports the operational activities of NWS River Forecast Centers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government entities, along with research and commercial sectors. Based on the community WRF-Hydro software architecture, it has been rapidly upgraded via a partnership between the NWS Office of Water Prediction (OWP), the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. As with prior versions, V2.1, to be implemented in January of 2021, is underpinned by a network of 2.7 million vector-type river reaches for river routing, a 1km land surface grid for land surface modeling, and a 250m grid for surface and subsurface routing of runoff. This latest operational version builds on prior capabilities to expand the domain of the NWM to include Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Great Lakes drainage basin. In addition, V2.1 will include an enhanced reservoir module, snow physics improvements, forcing bias-correction, improved calibration and code modularity, and use of Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor observation-based precipitation for Hawaii.
Following on from V2.1, V3.0 will be implemented into operations in early 2023. In addition to geographic expansion to Alaska (Cook Inlet and Copper River Basin), the model code for Version 3.0 will include an improved runoff scheme, inland hydraulic routing, coastal hydraulics and coastal freshwater-estuary-ocean coupling (for compound flooding), improved hydrofabric, dynamic land cover ingest, improved channel and land surface parameters, increased modularity, an enhanced reservoir module, use of an improved Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor (MRMS) precipitation blend, and improved calibration.
This presentation will provide an overview of these recent and planned NWM upgrades, along with updates on community development and the other hydrologic activity areas.
