Overarching Goal
Establish a central collaborative facility within RAL and a national distributive network of collaborators for developing, testing, and validating forecast systems for various atmospheric parameters important to operational decision makers.
Motivation
As referenced in earlier sections of this plan, the recent NCAR reorganization resulted in moving the WRF Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) to RAL. A decision was then made in RAL to attempt to broaden the DTC concept by forming a Joint Numerical Testbed (JNT) that would be highly collaborative with other model development and testing activities and laboratories in the U.S. This goal is motivated by the perceived broader need to better integrate, test and validate numerical weather prediction models, advanced data assimilation systems, land surface models, dynamic land use schemas, and physics packages (e.g., cloud microphysics, cumulus parameterizations, radiation, PBL, turbulence, fire, chemistry, etc) in a WRF mesoscale modeling context or an earth systems modeling framework context.
Strategic Approach
RAL will continue to develop and expand the WRF DTC functionality by working closely with the WRF Executive Oversight Board and its members (NOAA, NCAR, AFWA, NRL, Army ARL and FAA). A tight budget environment currently exists in all of these organizations and is likely to continue for several years, which will be a significant challenge. The first sub-goal is to stabilize the funding associated with the new facility. Follow-on tasks will include more emphasis on integration and testing of data assimilation options, physics packages and coupled models.
This goal, developing and expanding the WRF DTC, is primarily focused on the scientific and technical aspects of accomplishing it; however, the political aspects must be clearly recognized and understood. The facility as described here can only become a reality if all collaborative members of the community want to see it succeed and support it sufficiently to allow it to develop over a period of years. Much work must be applied by RAL staff in this regard. In a strategic sense the approach is to address both the technical and political aspects of developing the facility simultaneously and make whatever corrections are necessary from year to year to maintain stability and keep the facility growing.