[nws-changes] 20130611: NCEP orod suite operational on WCOSS Fwd: ADMIN NOTICE NOUS41 KWBC

• To: nws-changes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [nws-changes] 20130611: NCEP orod suite operational on WCOSS Fwd: ADMIN NOTICE NOUS41 KWBC
• From: Linda Miller <lmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:30:20 -0600

-------- Original Message --------

441
NOUS41 KWBC 111825
PNSWSH

National Weather Service Headquarters Washington, DC
225 PM EDT Tue June 11 2013

           -Family of Services
           -NOAA Weather Wire Service
           -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
           -NOAAPORT
           Other NWS Partners, Users and Employees

           Acting Chief, Production Management Branch
           NCEP Central Operations

           July 16, 2013, with Live Testing June 25th.and
           July 2nd

Effective Tuesday July 16, 2013, with the 1200 Universal
Coordinated Time (UTC) cycle, the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction (NCEP) will transition the NCEP
Production Suite to the new Weather and Climate Operational
Supercomputing System (WCOSS).  All models and applications in
the NCEP Production Suite will be run on the WCOSS and
disseminated from those systems.

Users should take note of the following:
  - The model solutions on the WCOSS differ from those on the
current operational supercomputing system due to significant
machine differences and small differences in data timing.
  - There are some modifications to output products and product
content.  Those differences are outlined below.
  - NCEP will conduct two live tests of the WCOSS system on
Tuesday June 25th, and Tuesday, July 2nd, during the 1200 UTC
model cycle.  The test will start with the 06 UTC GDAS system and
run through the 15 UTC SREF run.  During this live test, data
will be disseminated operationally from only the WCOSS system via
NOAAPORT and the NWS/NCEP ftp servers, and users will need to be
prepared for the product changes described below.
  - The transition to WCOSS on July 16th will not affect how data
is disseminated to users -- data will continue to be available on
NOAAPORT and the NWS and NCEP ftp servers where it is currently
available.
  - The July 16th implementation date may need to be postponed or
moved up in the event that a Critical Weather Day (CWD) is
anticipated.

As mentioned above, there are some differences in the output
format and content of the NCEP Production Suite.  The highlights
are as follows:

- Major upgrades to the HWRF and HYSPLIT models with smaller
enhancements/bug fixes to the SREF and NAM models.  The Global
RTOFS system will be expanded to produce output for 8 days, up
from the current 6 days.
- Some filename and compression changes for the Wave models,
NGOFS model, NAM, and NCEP FNMOC combined ensemble
- Some larger-sized files from the hurricane wave model will now
be compressed, while files from the NGOFS will be broken up by
forecast hour.
- Some changes to the order of fields in files, and changes to
precision of some fields in the CFS.
- Some CDAS ocean files will no longer contain FORTRAN blocking.
- The CDC products on the NCEP ftp server will be discontinued,
along with a few output files from the NWW3 wave model that have
alternate wave model output to replace them.
- The delivery times of some products may change  mostly in the
direction of products coming out earlier.  This is still being
refined as we do final tuning and will be posted at the webpage
below.

All of the known changes are outlined at:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/changes/docs/wcosseval.shtml

As part of this transition NCEP has been making the output from
the WCOSS runs of the NCEP Production Suite available to the
public for evaluation.  We will continue to do this until WCOSS
goes operational.  Users are encouraged to review this parallel
output to evaluate any changes needed prior to the June 25th and
July 2nd live tests.

If you have technical questions or comments, please contact:

  NWS/NCEP Central Operations
  College Park, MD
  Rebecca.cosgrove@xxxxxxxx

National Technical Implementation Notices are online at: