>From: Robert Mullenax <rmullenax@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Organization: Universal Weather
>Keywords: 200203221710.g2MHA4a16666
Robert, Christian, et. al.,
The upcoming MRF replacement seems to be a popular topic today:
Robert wrote:
>I think this question has been answered before here, but I can't seem to
>find it if it has.
>With all of the changes going on with the AVN/MRF, what will be transmitted
>on NOAAPORT.
>I know the 384 hour data will not be on NOAAPORT, but will it still be the
>AVN 4 times a day out to 120 hours
>and then one MRF-like run out to 240?
>
>Thanks, and I apologize if this has been answered already.
Christian wrote:
>I just read again that MRF will be phased out.
>So, what will we receive through LDM?
>I would want to know which AVN grids will be send out in details (horizontal
>resolution, coverage, forecast hours, pqact.conf requests to get them) so that
>I can migrate all my MRF-related jobs to the AVN after the switch at the end of
>April.
Several items related to the MRF and AVN changes have been posted to
the nws-changes email list in the past couple of months. These messages
are generated by the NWS and sent in the NOAAPORT NWSTG stream. A short
"archive" of these messages are also maintained on an NWS web site:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/chgnot.shtml
The following is the set of notices that have been included in the
nws-changes list since the beginning of February:
From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 07:55:16 -0700
To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20020211: model changes-(fwd)
SUBJECT: Changes to the NWS Production Suite
A series of changes to the NCEP global model are planned for
this Spring. A tentative date of 5 March 2002 has been set to
increase the forecast length of the global AVN model to 384
hours. This model currently produces a 126 hour forecast at 00Z
and 12Z and an 84 hour forecast at 06Z and 18Z.
A tentative date of 2 April 2002 has been set to replace the
00Z MRF model with the 00Z AVN. Look-alike grids for the MRF
will be created and disseminated from the 00Z AVN. These look
alike grids will be available until 1 October 2002.
Finally, in early May the resolution of the NCEP global
model will be increased from T170L42 to T254L64.
The NCEP quarterly backup test which had been rescheduled
for 14 February 2002 has now been canceled. A new test date in
March will be announced as soon as it becomes available.
Item 42, which had been withdrawn at 19Z on 1 February 2002
due to a problem with processing graphics in the new G3 format,
will be re-implemented at 12Z on 12 February 2002.
On Tuesday, 5 February 2002, NCEP discontinued dissemination
of all its AFOS products. The production of these products on
the NCEP supercomputer will be discontinued on 12 March 2002.
On Tuesday, 19 March 2002, changes will be made to the BUFR
data stored on the NCEP supercomputer. Please see the bottom of
this memo for more information.
A list of the major model implementations planned for 2002
can be found at:
http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/NCO/PMB/changes
As additional information about each implementation becomes
available, links will be added on the change summary page.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 07:15:32 -0700
To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20020225: AVN-ADMIN NOTICE NOXX10 KWBC (fwd)
300
NOXX10 KWBC 252103
DATA MGT MESSAGE 02-02.12
TO AWIPS/NOAAPORT USERS... FAMILY OF SERVICES /FOS/
SUBSCRIBERS EMERGENCY MANAGERS WEATHER INFORMATION
NETWORK /EMWIN/NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE /NWS/
CUSTOMERS... WAFS USERS... GTS USERS... NWS FAX CHART USERS
FROM RTH WASHINGTON DATA MANAGEMENT
EFFECTIVE MARCH 27... 2002... FORECAST DATA FROM ALL FOUR
RUNS OF THE AVN MODEL WILL BE AVAILABLE OUT TO 384 HOURSON THE
NWS FTP SERVERS. THIS WILL NOT AFFECT MESSAGES SENT TO
COMMUNICATIONS LINES OR BROADCASTS. THESE RUNS WILL BE
MADE AT T170L42 RESOLUTION /APPROXIMATELY 1 DEGREE
HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION/ OUT TO 180 HOURS WITH OUTPUT IN 3-
HOUR INCREMENTS. FROM 192 TO 384 HOURS THE RESOLUTION OF
THESE RUNS WILL BE REDUCED TO T62L28 /APPROXIMATELY 2.5
DEGREE HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION/ WITH OUTPUT IN 12-HOUR
INCREMENTS.
THE FOLLOWING DIRECTORIES ON THE NWS FTP SERVERS WILL BE
AFFECTED BY THIS CHANGE
/SL.US008001/ST.OPNL/MT.AVN/UNDERSCORE/CY.HH/RD.YYYYMMDD/
PT.GRID/UNDERSCORE/DF.GR1.
THIS DIRECTORY CONTAINS TWO MAIN FILE TYPES... A 3-D GRIB FILE
AND A GRIB FILE OF SURFACE FLUXES... PLUS THEIR INDEX FILES.
AT 12 UTC A MUCH REDUCED GRID AT 2.5 DEGREE RESOLUTION IS
ALREADY AVAILABLE OUT TO 120 HOURS... BUT THIS IS A
RELATIVELY SMALL FILE COMPARED TO THE OTHERS.
THE APPROXIMATE DATA VOLUME CHANGE IN THIS DIRECTORY ARE
AS FOLLOWS
CURRENTLY 1445 MB OF DATA ARE STORED AT BOTH 00 AND 12 UTC..
AND 975 MB AT BOTH 06 AND 18 UTC FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF ABOUT
4.8 GB PER DAY. THIS IMPLEMENTATION WILL ADD 690 MB OF DATA
AT BOTH 00 AND 12 UTC AND 1160 MB AT 06 AND 18 UTC WHICH WILL
BRING THE TOTAL TO 2135 MB PER CYCLE OR 8.5 GB PER DAY.
THE APPROXIMATE AVAILABILITY TIMES OF THESE NEW DATA SETS
ARE AS FOLLOWS
00 UTC
FORECAST HOUR 129 - 384 AVAILABLE STARTING 0400 UTC WITH
FINAL PRODUCT AVAILABLE 30 MINUTES LATER
06 UTC
FORECAST HOUR 87 - 384 AVAILABLE STARTING 0945 UTC WITH
FINAL PRODUCT AVAILABLE 50 MINUTES LATER
12 UTC
FORECAST HOUR 129 - 384 AVAILABLE STARTING 1600 UTC WITH
FINAL PRODUCT AVAILABLE 30 MINUTES LATER.
18 UTC
FORECAST HOUR 87 - 384 AVAILABLE STARTING 2145 UTC WITH
FINAL PRODUCT AVAILABLE 50 MINUTES LATER.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE ARE CURRENTLY NO PLANS TO DISSEMINATE
THESE ADDITIONAL DATA ANYWHERE EXCEPT FOR THE NWS AND
NCEP FTP SERVERS.
FOR FOS/NOAAPORT AND NON-AWIPS CUSTOMERS - IF YOU HAVE
ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE... PLEASE CONTACT
DATA MANAGEMENT
LOWER CASE
EMAIL NWS.DM/AT SYMBOL//NOAA.GOV
THIS INFORMATION IS ALSO POSTED ON THE NWS DATA
MANAGEMENT CHANGE NOTICES WEB PAGE THE URL IS LISTED
BELOW
HTTP/COLON///WWW.NWS.NOAA.GOV/DATAMGMT/NOTICES.SHTML
DATA MANAGEMENT TELECOMMUNICATION OPERATIONS CENTER
RTH WASHINGTON SENDS
From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 06:30:35 -0700
To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20020228: Global Fcst chgs-ADMIN NOTICE NOXX10 KWBC (fwd)
066
NOXX10 KWBC 281241
DATA MGT MESSAGE 02-02.15
TO AWIPS/NOAAPORT USERS... FAMILY OF SERVICES /FOS/
SUBSCRIBERS EMERGENCY MANAGERS WEATHER INFORMATION
NETWORK /EMWIN/NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE /NWS/
CUSTOMERS... WAFS USERS... GTS USERS... NWS FAX CHART USERS
FROM RTH WASHINGTON DATA MANAGEMENT
SUBJECT UPCOMING CHANGES TO THE NCEP GLOBAL FORECAST
SYSTEM
IN LATE WINTER AND SPRING OF 2002... NCEP WILL BE MAKING
SEVERAL CHANGES TO ITS GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM /GFS/. THE
NCEP GFS INCLUDES THE MRF... THE AVN... AND THE GLOBAL DATA
ASSIMILATION SYSTEM /GDAS/... WHICH IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE
FNL.
CURRENTLY THE MRF RUN OF THE GFS IS RUN ONCE PER DAY
AT 00 UTC. THE RESOLUTION OF THE MRF IS T170L42 /75
KM HORIZONTAL/ OUT TO 168 HOURS AND T62L28 /210 KM
HORIZONTAL/ RESOLUTION FROM 180 TO 384 HOURS. OUTPUT ARE
MADE AVAILABLE FROM THE MRF IN 12-HOUR INCREMENTS. THE
AVN RUN OF THE GFS IS CURRENTLY RUN FOUR TIMES PER DAY AT
T170L42 RESOLUTION. AT 00 AND 12 UTC THE AVN PRODUCES
FORECAST OUT TO 126 HOURS AND AT 06 AND 18 UTC IT PRODUCES
FORECASTS TO 84 HOURS. ALL FOUR RUNS OF THE AVN PRODUCE
OUTPUT IN 3-HOUR INCREMENTS. THE GDAS RUN OF THE GFS IS
RUN FOUR TIMES PER DAY AT BOTH T170L42 AND T62L28
RESOLUTIONS AND PRODUCES A NINE HOUR FORECAST THAT IS
USED AS INPUT INTO THE NEXT RUN OF THE AVN AND FNL.
THE FIRST CHANGE TO THE NCEP GFS HAS BEEN TENTATIVELY
SCHEDULED FOR 5 MARCH 2002. ON THIS DATE THE LENGTH OF
ALL FOUR RUNS OF THE AVN WILL BE INCREASED TO 384 HOURS.
THESE RUNS WILL BE MADE AT T170L42 RESOLUTION OUT TO 180
HOURS WITH OUTPUT IN 3-HOUR INCREMENTS. FROM 192 TO 384
HOURS THE RESOLUTION OF THESE RUNS WILL BE REDUCED TO
T62L28 WITH OUTPUT IN 12-HOUR INCREMENTS. THERE ARE
CURRENTLY NO PLANS TO DISSEMINATE THESE ADDITIONAL DATA
ANYWHERE EXCEPT FOR THE NWS AND NCEP FTP SERVERS. PLEASE
NOTE THAT THIS IMPLEMENTATION WILL NOT CHANGE ANY OF THE
EXISTING AVN PRODUCTS ALREADY BEING DISSEMINATED FROM
NCEP.
AFTER THIS IMPLEMENTATION THE NEXT CHANGE TO THE NCEP GFS
IS TENTATIVELY SCHEDULED FOR 23 APRIL 2002. ON THIS DATE THE
MRF RUN WILL BE DISCONTINUED. NCEP WILL CREATE AND
DISSEMINATE MRF LOOK ALIKE GRIB FILES FROM THE 00 UTC AVN
RUN. THESE LOOK ALIKE GRIB FILES WILL BE CREATED FOR
APPROXIMATELY 6 MONTHS WHICH WILL ALLOW USERS OF THESE
PRODUCTS TIME TO TRANSITION TO THE EXTENDED AVN RUNS.
NCEP WILL MAKE THESE LOOK ALIKE GRIB FILES AVAILABLE
UNDER TEST DIRECTORIES ON THE NWS AND NCEP FTP SERVERS
SHORTLY AFTER THE EXTENSION OF THE AVN IS IMPLEMENTED
ON 5 MARCH 2002.
FINALLY... PENDING CAFTII APPROVAL IN MARCH 2002... THE
RESOLUTION OF THE GFS WILL BE INCREASED TO T256L64 /55 KM
HORIZONTAL/ RESOLUTION. THIS IMPLEMENTATION DATE HAS
BEEN TENTATIVELY SCHEDULED FOR SOMETIME IN MAY 2002.
MORE DETAILS ON THIS IMPLEMENTATION WILL BE FORTHCOMING
AFTER CAFTII APPROVAL.
NCEP APPRECIATES YOUR PATIENCE AS WE TRANSITION TO A
BETTER GFS.
FOR FOS/NOAAPORT AND NON-AWIPS CUSTOMERS - IF YOU HAVE
ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE... PLEASE CONTACT
DATA MANAGEMENT
LOWER CASE
EMAIL NWS.DM/AT SYMBOL//NOAA.GOV
THIS INFORMATION IS ALSO POSTED ON THE NWS DATA
MANAGEMENT CHANGE NOTICES WEB PAGE THE URL IS LISTED
BELOW
HTTP/COLON///WWW.NWS.NOAA.GOV/DATAMGMT/NOTICES.SHTML
DATA MANAGEMENT TELECOMMUNICATION OPERATIONS CENTER
RTH WASHINGTON SENDS
From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 15:47:15 -0700
To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20020304: avn/mrf merger (fwd)
To: Hualu Pan <Hualu.Pan@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: avn/mrf merger
All,
There is a change to the AVN/MRF suite which will be transparent to
all users in the beginning but is the first step of a process NCEP is
taking to simplify the runs of the NCEP global model. What will happen
for the 12Z run on 5 March 2002 is that the AVN runs will be extended to
the same length as the MRF runs (out to 384 hours). While people who
directly download the GRIB files will benefit immediately to this
change, it will eventually affect all people who use the MRF forecasts.
As the AVN forecasts have become more popular, there is more demand
on the length of the forecast. We currently run the AVN to 126 hours at
00Z and 12Z and to 84 hours at 06Z and 18Z. The weather service is going
toward 4-times daily update of weather to seven days both for the NCEP
service centers but also to the WFOs. Given that the MRF runs high
resolution forecasts to seven days and low resolution to 16 days, the
extension of the AVN beyond five days would make the MRF product
duplicating the AVN for the most part (the low resolution part of the
MRF uses much less resource compared to the high resolution part). We
compared the AVN forecasts and the MRF forecasts for one whole year to
determine if replacing the MRF forecasts with the AVN forecasts will
degrade the forecast skill and we found that the skills of the two
forecasts are practically the same. The only difference between the AVN
forecast and the MRF forecast is that we wait 2 hours and 45 minutes for
observations to arrive at NCEP before starting the AVN runs and 6 hours
for the MRF. Since we start both forecasts with the best first guess
from our global data assimilation system, this one-time difference in
the cutoff time is not crucial to the forecast skill (the explanation
would take too much space here). Furthermore, we will be issuing the 06Z
AVN not long after the normal MRF forecasts are issued. The later
forecasts are usually better than the earlier ones. For NCEP, once we
start to issue AVN forecasts to seven days, it makes no sense to keep
the MRF. It also makes little difference if we extend the AVN to 16 days
in low resolution.
Many people would ask if we have any skill credential to issue two
week forecasts every six hours. Our strategy is to make these forecasts
part of our ensemble strategy. Given that week-two forecasts can only be
used as outlooks and the skill of any individual forecast is very low,
we can only hope to use the ensemble strategy to provide information
about the atmosphere regimes. Running all the ensemble at 00z or running
them at 4 different times are just different strategies. Later this year
when we get more computer resource, we plan to run the global ensemble
four times daily with ten members per run (a doubling of our ensemble
members).
As for the MRF, we plan to stop running that in April. We will make
all the files currently made by MRF from the 00Z AVN runs so users will
not be inconvinienced and will have lots of time to change over to the
AVN products.
Finally, there has been a lot of confusions about the names AVN and
MRF. By streamlining the forecasts to one single suite, we hope to
reduce that confusion. We plan to rename our forecast suite from AVN to
the Global Forecast System (GFS) at a later time and we will provide
ample lead time before we make the change. Please feel free to write to
me with any question you may have about this change.
Hua-Lu Pan
From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 13:54:15 -0700
To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: 20020315: Global models
March 15, 2002
MEMORANDUM FOR: Distribution E
FROM: John H. Ward
Chief, Production Management Branch
SUBJECT: Changes to the NWS Production Suite
A series of changes to the NCEP global model are planned for
this Spring. On Tuesday, 5 March 2002, at 12Z the forecast
length of the global AVN model was increased to 384 hours for all
four cycles. These extended forecast data are currently
available on the NCEP ftp server at:
ftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/avn/prod/.
On 27 March 2002 these data will become available on the NWS
ftp server at:
ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/SL.us008001/ST.opnl/.
A tentative date of 23 April 2002 has been set to replace
the 00Z MRF model with the 00Z AVN. Look-alike grids for the MRF
will be created and disseminated from the 00Z AVN. These look-
alike grids will be available through Fall 2002. NCEP is
currently making these look alike grids in parallel production.
These data are available on the NCEP ftp server at:
ftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/mrf/para/.
Finally, in early June the resolution of the NCEP global
model will be increased from T170L42 to T254L64.
The change in resolution of the RUC model from 40 km to 20
km originally scheduled for Tuesday, 9 April at 12Z has been
rescheduled for Tuesday, 16 April at 12Z. There will be no
change in the forecast grids being disseminated via AWIPS or
Family of Services. A Real-Time Test and Evaluation of the 20 Km
RUC began on 8 March. Test data is available on the NCEP ftp
server at:
ftp://ftpprd.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/ruc/para/.
Advertised changes to the BUFR data stored on the NCEP
supercomputer originally planned for 19 March, have been
postponed to 26 March to allow for further testing. Please see
the bottom of this memo for more information.
The next NCEP quarterly backup test has been scheduled for
the 00Z cycle on 4 April 2002 (1900 EST 03 April 2002). If the
weather situation prohibits this test, it will be attempted on 11
April 2002.
A list of the major model implementations planned for 2002
can be found at:
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/changes
As additional information about each implementation becomes
available, links will be added on the change summary page.
To unsubscribe from the JIF memo use the link provided at:
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/jifmemo/
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is all of the information that we (Unidata) have on the MRF/AVN
changes.
I hope that this helps...
Tom
--
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* (303) 497-8642 (last resort) P.O. Box 3000 *
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* Unidata WWW Service http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/*
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