Latest News

September 28, 2020 – Recent research shows the range of skillful tropical cyclone track forecasts is expected to be extended by a day per decade in the future. The study, by scientists Feifan Zhou from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zoltan Toth from NOAA’s Global Systems Laboratory, was published...

The Global Systems Laboratory’s (GSL) Science On a Sphere® (SOS) team has launched educational tours on its free mobile app – SOS Explorer™ (SOSx) including post-tour exercises for students. You can find the tours here: https://sos.noaa.gov/education/sosx-tours/ Science On a Sphere Explorer™ datasets can be quite complex. Tours guide users through...

With smoke from western wildfires poised to spread from coast to coast this week, people will be looking to a NOAA smoke model for guidance on everything from how it might impact their area, to the weather, to scheduling school recesses. The High Resolution Rapid Refresh-Smoke model may still be...

Two GSL staff were honored with a NOAA Silver Sherman Award. The Silver Sherman is awarded on an ad hoc basis by each member of the NOAA Leadership. It recognizes an individual who has performed work above his or her normal requirements, achieved a milestone that contributed significantly toward the...

While the eastern seaboard deals with the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias, the Apple Fire in southern California is poised to send smoke across much of the southwest United States over the next few days. NOAA’s experimental HRRR-Smoke model predicts that by midnight on Wednesday, August 5, smoke from the...

In August, a limited number of NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) will test and evaluate Hazard Services Winter Weather Watch/Warning/Advisory (WWA) capabilities. This will be possible through a special version of the software that GSL’s Evaluation and Decision Support Division has built and will make available to certain WFO’s. This...

GSL’s John Brown has been honored with the American Meteorological Society’s 2020 Charles L. Mitchell Award “For selfless dedication during more than four decades of service in developing forecast techniques, advancing model performance, training forecasters, and forecasting for large field programs. The Charles L. Mitchell Award is given in recognition...

One of NOAA’s newest models is providing more accurate forecasts of where the air quality impacts of the dust from the Saharan desert will be felt. Take a look at the movement of the dust as predicted by the model and visualized by NOAA GSL’s Science On a Sphere® team....

GSL/CIRA researcher Jeff Beck has been honored with a CIRA Exceptional Service Award for his leadership in the development, testing, and support of regional capabilities of NOAA’s numerical weather prediction models. Jeff has taken multiple leadership roles over the past year to help foster collaboration and community development of the...

GSL researchers will virtually host more than a dozen participants for a Functional Assessment Test of new Hazard Services capabilities. Hazard Services will modernize how the National Weather Service (NWS) and National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) create forecasts, watches, and warnings. The system provides a pathway to operations and...

June 15: GSL will demonstrate model advances in the 4-week Flash Flood and Intense Rainfall (FFaIR) experiment hosted by the Weather Prediction Center Hydrometeorology Testbed. The experiment brings together researchers and forecasters from across the meteorological community to work towards the common goal to enhance forecasting skill related to flash...

GSL’s Jeff VanBuskirk has been awarded a NOAA Bronze Medal “For identifying and implementing innovative data center upgrades to increase efficiency and resiliency for Research Supercomputing in NOAA.” The NOAA Bronze Medal is awarded for superior performance characterized by outstanding or significant contributions that have increased the efficiency and effectiveness...

CIRES announced the 2020 winners of their CIRES Outstanding Performance Awards targeted to honor projects that are novel, high impact, and show remarkable creativity or resourcefulness. GSL researchers won two awards in the “Service” category — projects that are successful because of the utility they have within the community. GSL/CIRES...

On March 31, 2020, GSD’s John Brown and NCAR’s Matt Kelsch will mark 30 years of daily weather observations taken at the Boulder NWS Cooperative Observation Program (COOP) site at the Department of Commerce campus. The minimum length of time to establish a “climatology” for a site is 30 years....

GSD and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) through the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) announced upgraded tools for the modeling community to experiment with and advance physical parameterizations for numerical weather prediction. The Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) v4.0.0, along with the CCPP Single Column Model (SCM), were released...

A GSD team had a significant role in the first public release of the user-friendly Unified Forecast System (UFS) Medium-Range Weather Application on March 11. This accomplishment took outstanding dedication and cross-agency collaboration. We congratulate the team that has been on the front lines of this work: GSD: Ligia Bernardet,...

GSD modelers have created a 1km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) nest over the Great Lakes region this winter to support the FAA-led In-Cloud ICing and Large drop Experiment (ICICLE) project from January through March 2019. The ICICLE field campaign will collect atmospheric data from airborne and ground-based sensors to better...

GSD researchers Stan Benjamin and John Brown were lead authors on a chapter called “100 Years of Progress in Forecasting and NWP Applications” for the American Meteorological Society Centennial Monograph. Co-authors include Gilbert Brunet, Environment and Climate Change Canada; Peter Lynch, University College Dublin; Kazuo Saito, AORI, University of Tokyo;...

By the order of Sherman’s Lagoon, Gary Matlock, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, presented Penny Granville, GSD’s Administrative Officer, with the Silver Sherman Award. Penny is honored for her commitment and dedication to driving GSD toward administrative excellence. She has demonstrated leadership, foresight, commitment, and teamwork that will pay off...

Since mid-2017, a NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) / National Weather Service (NWS) cross-line office team has been working together to improve lake-effect snow, lake ice, and visibility forecasts. Lake-effect snowfall is one of the most hazardous weather events in the Great Lakes region, and forecasting the timing and...