Hfip Technical Report: Hfip2014-2, 2013 Hfip R&d Activities Summary: Recent Results and Operational Implementation

Abstract

This report describes the activities and results of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) in 2013. Since this is the fourth year of the first five years of the project, we, like last year, focus on the improvements in the operational Global Forecast System (GFS) global model and the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) regional model. HFIP is organized around the three “streams”: Stream 1 or the operational model development; Stream 1.5 which comprises a group of experimental models that have been evaluated by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) pre-season and then made available to NHC forecasters during their forecast cycle; and Stream 2 representing HFIP experimental models which test and evaluate new techniques and strategies for model forecast guidance before testing is begun for possible operational implementation. Stream 2 also tests techniques that cannot be tested on current operational computers because of their size and time requirements, but can be tested on HFIP computer facilities in Boulder, Colorado. Those studies are looking ahead to possible future operational computational capability. The report outlines the HFIP program, how it is organized, its goals, its models, and then results from each of the three streams.