GFS Data

Will this have any effect on WXSIM?

NOUS41 KWBC 241300PNSWSHTECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION NOTICE 09-32NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON DC900 AM EST THU SEP 23 2009TO: SUBSCRIBERS: -FAMILY OF SERVICES -NOAA WEATHER WIRE SERVICE -EMERGENCY MANAGERS WEATHER INFORMATION NETWORK -NOAAPORT OTHER NWS PARTNERS...USERS AND EMPLOYEESFROM: JASON TUELL SCIENCE PLANS BRANCH CHIEF OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SUBJECT: GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM CHANGES: EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 15 2009EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 15 2009...BEGINNING WITH THE 1200 COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME /UTC/ RUN...THE NATIONAL CENTERS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PREDICTION /NCEP/ WILL UPGRADE SEVERAL COMPONENTS OF THE GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM /GFS/. NEW DATA SOURCES AND IMPROVED NUMERICAL TECHNIQUES WILL BEINCLUDED IN THE GRIDPOINT STATISTICAL INTERPOLATION /GSI/ ANALYSIS. THE POST PROCESSORS USED FOR THE GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM/GFS/ AND THE GLOBAL DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM /GDAS/ WILL BE UNIFIED AND TWO MINOR CHANGES WILL BE INTRODUCED INTO THE GLOBAL FORECAST MODEL. UNIFICATION OF THE POST PROCESSING CODES WILL RESULT IN SLIGHTLY LESS SMOOTH FIELDS IN THE GDAS. IN ADDITION THE ACCURACY IN THE FORMULATION OF A NUMBER OF DIAGNOSTIC VARIABLES WILL BE IMPROVED AND ADDITIONAL PARAMETERS WILL BE ADDED TO THE MODEL OUTPUT FILES. THE ANALYSIS CHANGES INCLUDE:-ASSIMILATING TROPICAL STORM PSEUDO SEA-LEVEL PRESSURE OBSERVATIONS-ASSIMILATING NOAA-19 HIRS/4 AND AMSU-A BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE OBSERVATIONS-ASSIMILATING RARS 1B DATA-ASSIMILATING NOAA-18 SBUV/2 OZONE OBSERVATIONS. MONITOR NOAA-19, GOME AND OMI OZONE OBSERVATIONS-ASSIMILATING EUMETSAT-9 ATMOSPHERIC MOTION VECTORS-USING UNIFORM THINNING MESH FOR BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE DATA-IMPROVING ASSIMILATION OF GPS RADIAL OCCULTATION /RO/ DATA /QC... RE-TUNED OBSERVATION ERRORS/-ADDING DRY MASS PRESSURE CONSTRAINT-USING GODDARD MODELING AND ASSIMILATION OFFICE/EMC MERGED CODE INCLUDING HOOKS FOR 4DVAR AND OBSERVATION SENSITIVITY-UPDATING BACKGROUND ERROR COVARIANCE FILECHANGES TO THE GLOBAL FORECAST MODEL INCLUDE:-UPGRADING EARTH SYSTEM MODELING FRAMEWORK /ESMF/ TO VERSION 3.1.0RP2-CHANGING OUTPUT CLOUD DEFINITION INCLUDING BOUNDARY LAYER CLOUD AND LOW CLOUDTHE PARAMETERS WITH IMPROVED FORMULATIONS IN THE POST PROCESSOR INCLUDE:-VORTICITY-ISENTROPIC POTENTIAL VORTICITY /IPV/-DYNAMIC TROPOPAUSE FIELDS-PLANETARY BOUNDARY LAYER /PBL/ MEAN RH-BEST CAPE/CIN-BEST LIFTED INDEX-LFM 0.33-1.00 RHTHE NEW PARAMETERS FOR THE GDAS INCLUDE: -UNFILTERED SEA LEVEL PRESSURETHE NEW PARAMETERS FOR THE GFS PRESSURE GRIB FILES INCLUDE: -RELATIVE HUMIDITY AT 10...30...50 AND 70 MB-HELICITY-ICAO HEIGHT AT THE TROPOPAUSE AND MAXIMUM WIND LEVEL-SUNSHINE DURATIONTHE NEW PARAMETERS IN THE GLOBAL FORECAST MODEL SURFACE FILES /SFLUXGRBFXX.GRIB2/ INCLUDE:-MAXIMUM SPECIFIC HUMIDITY-MINIMUM SPECIFIC HUMIDITY-DOWNWARD SOLAR RADIATION FLUX AT TOP OF ATMOSPHERE-CLEAR SKY /CS/ UPWARD LONG WAVE RADIATION FLUX AT TOP OF ATMOSPHERE-CS UPWARD SOLAR RADIATION FLUX AT TOP OF ATMOSPHERE-CS DOWNWARD LONGWAVE RADIATION FLUX AT SURFACE-CS UPWARD SOLAR RADIATION FLUX AT SURFACE-CS DOWNWARD SOLAR RADIATION FLUX AT SURFACE-CS UPWARD LONG WAVE RADIATION FLUX AT SURFACE-SNOW PHASE-CHANGE HEAT FLUX AT LAND SURFACE-WILTING POINT AT LAND SURFACE-FIELD CAPACITY AT LAND SURFACE-SUNSHINE DURATIONTHESE CONTENT CHANGES WILL IMPACT THE NWS PUBLIC FTP SERVER AND THE NCEP PUBLIC FTP SERVER. DATA DELIVERY TIMING WILL NOT BE IMPACTED BY THIS IMPLEMENTATION. A SMALL INCREASE IN DATA VOLUMES IS EXPECTED.TEST DATA IS ONLINE AT /USE LOWERCASE/ EXCEPT FOR WRF:HTTP://WWWT.EMC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV/MMB/WRFRETRO/GFS_PARA/A CONSISTENT PARALLEL FEED OF DATA WILL BECOME AVAILABLE ON THE NCEP FTP SERVER ONCE THE MODEL IS RUNNING IN PARALLEL ON THE NCEP CENTRAL COMPUTING SYSTEM ON OCTOBER 27 2009. THE PARALLEL DATA THEN WILL BECOME AVAILABLE VIA THE FOLLOWING URL /USE LOWERCASE/:FTP://FTP.NCEP.NOAA.GOV/PUB/DATA/NCCF/COM/GFS/PARANCEP ENCOURAGES ALL USERS TO ENSURE THEIR DECODERS ARE FLEXIBLE AND ARE ABLE TO ADEQUATELY HANDLE CHANGES IN CONTENT...PARAMETER FIELDS CHANGING ORDER...CHANGES IN THE SCALING FACTOR COMPONENT WITHIN THE PDS OF THE GRIB FILES AND ANY VOLUME CHANGES WHICH MAY OCCUR. THESE ELEMENTS MAY CHANGE WITH FUTURE NCEP MODEL IMPLEMENTATIONS. NCEP WILL MAKE EVERY ATTEMPT TO alert USERS TO THESE CHANGES PRIOR TO ANY IMPLEMENTATION.FOR QUESTIONS REGARDING THESE MODEL CHANGES...PLEASE CONTACT: JOHN H. WARD NCEP...GLOBAL MODELING BRANCH CAMP SPRINGS MARYLAND 301-763-8000 X 7185 [email protected] HUI-YA CHUANG NCEP...GLOBAL MODELING BRANCH CAMP SPRINGS MARYLAND 301-763-8000 X 7219 [email protected] RUSS TREADON NECP...GLOBAL MODELING BRANCH CAMP SPRINGS MARYLAND 301-763-8000 X 7743 [email protected] QUESTIONS REGARDING THE DATAFLOW ASPECTS OF THESE DATA SETS... PLEASE CONTACT REBECCA COSGROVE NCEP/NCO DATAFLOW TEAM CAMP SPRINGS MARYLAND 20746 301-763-8000 X 7198 [email protected] NATIONAL TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION NOTICES ARE ONLINE AT /USE LOWERCASE/: HTTP://WWW.NWS.NOAA.GOV/OS/NOTIF.HTM$$NNNN

8O 8O 8O

Just downloaded and checked mine and its OK. Have you d/l’d more than once to make sure?

Stuart

As it states, the change will only happen on the 15th of December.
I suspect Tom will tell us if anything needs changing.

:oops: #-o Oh its not what you downloaded but what you found somewhere. Might have been an idea to point us at where you found this. If it is affecting the GFS downloaded via wxsimate then Chris (admin) might need to do something as its his systems which create the data before wxsimate downloads it.

Stuart

Thanks for that notice! I don’t know if it will affect anything or not, but I’ll definitely tell Chris!

Tom

GFS data not find anywhere in the selected windows. We’re still at 15 December but I get the notice attached and stops the prediction. It happens to anyone else?
Best regards


I don’t know how it happened, but somehow almost all your data import choices have become unchecked. You need to manually check RAOB and READY/GFS on that form. Let me know if that fixes it. So far, the GFS data is still coming in, and I think Chris is working on a script for the changeover.

Tom

The screenshot was intentional because he had the impression that there was nothing marked. I do not know how to fix it because when you start importing data notice appears and closes the possibility of checking the boxes.
Certainly not know what happened.
Thanks for your help

Best regards

Fixed, for now. I could make the boxes in a manual run.
Thanks again

Glad you got it fixed. Whenever you need to fix or change things, just disable auto run and then you can visit all the forms and make the necessary changes.

By the way, Chris tells me he thinks his scripts will read the new GFS data starting tomorrow. The only changes should be slight changes in the forecast itself - hopefully for the better!

I’d like to publicly thank Chris for downloading and processing those big GRIB files to produce our nice GFS data for WXSIM! If you are a long time user who used to download READY data (which is still a backup method), you can really appreciate how convenient Chris’s system makes things! :slight_smile:

Tom

It’s fun working out how to download over 400GB of data per month, then processing 3.5GB of data to extract tens of millions of data values for tens of thousands of locations as quickly as possible to get the data available for WxSim users. Writing lean code matters a lot when you’re doing that, so it’s been a very useful learning exercise.

I’ve still got one change left to design/code/implement which might get the data available to you even sooner, but as it’s quite a major change I’m waiting until I have enough spare time to implement it. The Christmas holidays are looming large so I might find time to start then.

PS. I’ve no way of knowing whether my scripts are reading the ‘old’ or ‘new’ model data. The data appears in the same place for download. Has anyone seen any confirmation from NWS that they’ve switched to the new model yet?

Saw on their site it changes at the run started at 12 UTC, here: http://www.weather.gov/os/notification/tin09-32aabgfs_changes.txt

It should be live now. Anyone seeing anything different?

Thanks Chris for the hard work.

Haven’t looked deeper yet but at least my GFS-maps/meteogram made by OpenGrads went fine, no errors at all.

Henkka