Time to trust the GFS is coming?

[rdale]

EFFECTIVE JUNE 22 2010...BEGINNING WITH THE 1200 COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME /UTC/ RUN...THE NATIONAL CENTERS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PREDICTION /NCEP/ WILL UPGRADE THE GLOBAL FORECAST SYSTEM /GFS/. THE RESOLUTION OF THE GLOBAL FORECAST MODEL WILL BE INCREASED FROM T382 /35 KM/ TO T574 /27 KM/.
THE HIGH RESOLUTION PORTION OF THE FORECAST WILL BE EXTENDED FROM 180 HRS TO 192 HRS. WITH THIS EXTENSION 3 HOURLY OUTPUT WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE OUT TO 192 HOURS.

THIS WILL RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE DEFINITION OF PARAMETERS IN THE 192 HOUR PRESSURE GRIB /PGRB/ AND FLUX FILES. THERE WILL ALSO BE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN MODEL PHYSICS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS CHANGE. IN ADDITION MODIFICATIONS WILL BE MADE TO THE CONTENTS OF THE GLOBAL DATA ASSIMILATION SYSTEM /GDAS/ AND GFS PGRB FILES.

CHANGES IN MODEL PHYSICS INCLUDE:

RADIATION AND CLOUD OVERLAP
GRAVITY WAVE DRAG
HURRICANE RELOCATION
NEW PLANETARY BOUNDARY LAYER SCHEME
NEW MASS FLUX SHALLOW CONVECTION
UPDATED DEEP CONVECTION SCHEME
POSITIVE DEFINITE TRACER TRANSPORT SCHEME

THE NEW PARAMETER FOR THE GFS FORECAST PRESSURE GRIB FILES IS:

MAX WIND GUST

 

[Kevin Rolfs]

Sounds like a pretty major face lift. It also sounds like it will be more like than NAM in some ways. Should be interesting to see how well it performs!

 

[NickSeyour]

It's been doing better and better lately however I still think there are some more accurate models to trust and each model may do better than another for a different kind of weather. Saying it's time to trust the GFS all the time seems to be wrong however I do think as I said earlier it's been doing better especially after it busted practically every storm this winter.

The best , Nick

 

[Skip Talbot]

Is this going to significantly impact the computation time for each run or is the hardware also being upgraded?

 

[rdale]

I've not heard a specific change - but from what I understand as they improve hardware they want to add features to the models at the same time. So their goal is not to reduce the model run time, but to fill it up with enough new features that when they upgrade the hardware, the run times end up about the same.

 

[Michael Riedl]

Can you link me with that?

 

[rdale]

Can you link me with that?

Not sure what you're asking...

 

[JF Massicotte]

Not sure what you're asking...

I think he's asking the link to the information...

 

[rdale]

Ahh... I got it via my weatherwire feed, I'm sure you can google a few terms and find the source online.

 

[Greg Blumberg]

Haha. I will never trust the GFS or any model. More improvements to fixing the biases and physics are nice, but I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I trust the models. I accept them as suggestions...never as the truth or even close to the truth. It's called "guidance" for a reason. The weather will and can break the model!

I don't know about you guys, but I get a real sense of satisfaction whenever the weather "breaks" the model. It's a humility thing for me, and it makes me laugh a bit inside. If we reach a point when we have the power to create consistent, accurate, (dare I say perfect) computer weather forecasts for all scales of weather, I believe it won't be a joyous day. It will be great for the safety of the public no doubt, but I think it'll be a sad day. Uncertainty has always been a defining characteristic of the science of meteorology. The day that we loose that, we loose the mystery of weather, as well as a good majority of the fun of storm chasing.