Water Impacts

We deliver relevant and timely information about the world’s complex water system, assisting water-resource planners and managers to address issues such as water supply, flooding, droughts, reservoir operations, emergency response, to name just a few. Our directed research and development, including several robust decision-support tools in hydrometeorology, aerosol-precipitation interactions, short-term precipitation nowcasting, cloud microphysical modeling, winter weather, and observational networks, are being implemented and deployed in countless arenas by researchers, water resource utility managers, and decision makers worldwide.

Benefits and Impacts

Developing a State-of-the-Art Research and Operational Weather Forecasting Model

The model serves a wide range of meteorological applications across scales from tens of meters to thousands of kilometers. WRF has thousands of users around the world.

Developing an Improved Flood Prediction System

A configuration of WRF-Hydro® was adopted by the National Weather Service in 2016 as the operational NOAA National Water Model (NWM) which continuously forecasts hydrologic risk across the continental United States and is seen as the future of national water prediction. The National Water Model configuration of WRF-Hydro® is in its second operational version and has expanded its forecasting capability to Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes regions.

Predicting impacts of land-surface processes on regional weather

This technology is an important component of advanced weather and hydrological prediction.

Providing Custom Information to Water Resource Managers

WEAP is currently used by several thousand water resource managers in the U.S. and in 170 countries around the world.