Operational Systems - Environmental Modeling Center
Software Directory with Accordions (added components)
Software Directory
The NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) System Architecture Description outlines layers and elements of the emerging unified modeling system.
All NCEP operational model source codes are available at this link
Global Forecast System (GFS) VLab page
FV3GFS VLab public page, with access to the Version 1 Public Release, FV3GFS Git Repositories and the FV3GFS Vlab Community page (follow the instructions on the public page to join this community).
Prediction packages are end-to-end systems that may include pre-processing, a modeling application, analysis, and post-processing.
Official guidance for many NCEP operational systems listed below can be found at the Model Analysis and Guidance (MAG) web page. The MAG page is supported 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
| Short Name | Long Name | Description | Documentation and Code Access | Forecast Products |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CFSv2 | Climate Forecast System version 2 | CFSv2 is a coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice modeling system used for seasonal-scale predictions. | CFS home page, CFSv2 documentation links | CFSv2 Products |
| ESTOFS | Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System | ESTOFS provides users nowcasts (analyses of near present conditions) and forecast guidance of water level conditions. | ESTOFS Products | |
| GEFS | Global Ensemble Forecast System | The Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) is a weather forecasting system made up of 21 separate forecasts or ensemble members, where the spread in predictions is used to quantify uncertainty in the forecast. | Progress of EPS Implementations, GEFS and NAEFS Version 1.0 Users Guide | GEFS Products |
| GFS | Global Forecast System | The GFS is a numerical weather prediction system that contains a model and variational analysis, used for forecasts up to 16 days. | GFS home page, Publications list, GFS Community Page on Vlab | GFS Products |
| HIRESW | High-Resolution Window Forecast System | The HIRESW system onsists of daily runs of the NCEP Non-Hydrostatic Multiscale Model on B-grid (NEMS-NMMB) and the NCAR Advanced Research WRF (WRF-ARW) at 3-4 km resolution. All runs use the NCEP GFS for initial and boundary conditions, except for the CONUS run which uses the RAP analysis for initial conditions. | HIRESW Home Page | HIRESW Products |
| HMON | Hurricanes in a Multi-scale Ocean Coupled Non-hydrostatic Model | HMON is a specialized version of the NMM-B which provides high-resolution hurricane guidance for days 1-5. | HMON home page, HMON Documentation | HMON Products |
| HREF | High-Resolution Ensemble Forecast | HREF uses NCEP operational convection-allowing (~3km) systems to generate ensemble products, using forecasts from the HIRESW and NAM 3km CONUS nest. The HRRR will be added in 2019. | HREF home page | HREF Products (in "href.YYYYMMDD" directories" |
| HRRR | High Resolution Rapid Refresh | The HRRR is a real-time 3-km resolution, hourly updated, cloud-resolving, convection-allowing atmospheric model, initialized by 3km grids with 3km radar assimilation. | HRRR Home Page at NOAA/ESRL | HRRR Products |
| HWRF | Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting Model | The HWRF model is a specialized version of the WRF model that is used to forecast the track and intensity of tropical cyclones. | HWRF home page at DTC, HWRF documents and publications page, HWRF User's Guide | Hurricane Products |
| HYSPLIT | HYbrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model | The HYbrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model is a complete system for computing simple air parcel trajectories, as well as complex transport, dispersion, chemical transformation, and deposition simulations. | HYSPLIT home page at ARL | HYSPLIT Products |
| NAEFS | North American Ensemble Forecast System | NAEFS combines the Canadian Global Environmental Multiscale Model and the U.S. NWS global ensemble prediction system based on GFS, improving probabilistic operational guidance over what can be built from any individual country's ensemble. | NAEFS Products | |
| NAM | North American Mesoscale Model | NAM is a forecast system run 4 times daily for the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Its model component is the Non-Hydrostatic Multi-scale Model on the B-grid (NMMB) and its analysis component is the Grid Point Statistical Interpolation (GSI). | NAM home page | NAM Products |
| NAQFC | The National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) | The NAQFC provides the U.S. with ozone, particulate matter and other pollutant forecasts. | NAQFC home page | AQM Products |
| NARRE-TL | North American Rapid Refresh Ensemble | NARRE is an operational ensemble forecast system based on time-lagging of 6 RAP and 4 NAM operational runs. It provides ensemble guidance for aviation. | NARRE Products | |
| NGAC | NEMS GFS Aerosol Component | NGAC is a global in-line aerosol forecast system. The forecast model component of the NGAC is the Global Forecast System (GFS). The aerosol component of the NGAC is Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport Model (GOCART). | NGAC Products | |
| NLDAS | North American Land Data Assimilation System | The NLDAS goal is to provide quality-controlled and spatially and temporally consistent land-surface model (LSM) datasets from the best available observations and model output to support modeling activities. | NLDAS Products | |
| NOS OFS Products | National Ocean Service Operational Forecast System Products | A variety of modeling products aimed at providing predictions of water levels, water currents, and water temperatures. | NOS OFS Products | |
| NWPS | Nearshore Wave Prediction System | The Nearshore Wave Prediction System provides on-demand, high-resolution nearshore wave model guidance to U.S. coastal WFOs, triggered in real time by forecast wind grids prepared and submitted by the individual offices. | NWPS Home Page | NWPS Model Viewer |
| OMB Products | Ocean Modeling Branch Products | A variety of modeling products aimed at prediction of quantities related to sea ice and fog. | OMB Products | |
| RAP | The RAPid Refresh | The RAP is designed to provide weather forecasts with hourly updates for uses such as aviation and severe weather. It is comprised of a configuration of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and an analysis/assimilation system that initializes the model. | RAP home page at ESRL | RAP Products |
| RTMA/URMA | Real-time Mesoscale Analysis; Unrestricted Mesoscale Analysis | RTMA and URMA are high spatial and temporal resolution analysis/assimilation systems for near-surface weather conditions. Its main component is the NCEP/EMC Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) system applied in two-dimensional variational mode to assimilate conventional and satellite-derived observations. URMA is the same as RTMA except that it runs with a 6 hour delay to use later arriving data. | RTMA/URMA page on Vlab | RTMA/URMA Products |
| RTOFS | The Real Time Ocean Forecast System | RTOFS is part of larger national ocean prediction capability sustained in partnership with the U.S. Navy. It is based on an eddy-resolving 1/12 degree version of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model. | RTOFS home page, Publications list and description | RTOFS Products |
| Sea Ice Drift | Sea Ice Drift | This model provides sea ice drift direction and speed forecast guidance for the northern hemisphere. | Sea Ice Drift Guidance | Sea Ice Drift Products |
| SREF | Short Range Ensemble Forecast | SREF is used to predict high-impact, mesoscale weather including: thunderstorms, large scale critical fire weather conditions, and mesoscale areas of hazardous winter weather. | SREF Products | |
| SST Analysis | Real-time Global (RTG) and Optimum Interpolation (OI) SST analysis | The RTG analyses are aimed at weather prediction, particularly at high resolution and short range. The RTG analyses employ a 2DVAR analysis technique. The OI analyses are lower resolution and aimed more at long range weather and climate. | NCEP SST Analysis Page OI SST publications list at NCEI | SST Analysis Products |
| WAVEWATCH III | Global Wave Forecast System | The NOAA wave model suite consists of global and regional nested grids. As background information, a list of selected references and a chronological list of model changes are available. Validation data are available for the multigrid model. | WAVEWATCH III Home page | Wave Model Products |
| WSA Enlil | Wang-Sheeley-Arge Enlil | WSA-Enlil is a large-scale, physics-based prediction model of the heliosphere, used by the Space Weather Forecast Office to provide 1-4 day advance warning of solar wind structures and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that cause geomagnetic storms. | WSA Enlil Products |
Applications are comprised of one or more components.
| Short Name | Long Name | Description | Documentation and Code Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reg-Nest | Regional Nest | The Regional Nest application couples the NMMB atmosphere, with moving nests, to HYCOM. | Regional Nest Milestone Documentation |
| UGCS-Seasonal | Unified Global Coupled System-Seasonal | The Unified Global Coupled System Seasonal (UGCS-Seasonal) application is being developed as the successor to the CFSv2 seasonal prediction system. | UGCS-Seasonal Milestone Documentation |
| WAM-IPE | Whole Atmosphere Model - Ionosphere Plasmasphere Electrodynamics Model | WAM-IPE is a being developed as a fully coupled system for operational space weather prediction. | WAM-IPE Milestone Documentation |
Components are distinct software elements of applications and prediction suites. The Earth System Prediction Suite (ESPS) website has code and cap documentation for NUOPC-compliant models.
| Short Name | Long Name | Type | Description | Documentation and Code Access | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CCPP | Common Community Physics Package | atmospheric physics | The CCPP is a model agnostic, vetted, collection of codes containing atmospheric physical parameterizations for use in numerical weather prediction. Common categories of parameterizations include radiation, surface layer, planetary boundary layer and vertical mixing, deep and shallow cumulus, and microphysics. | GFS Operational Physics Doumentation | |
| CICE | Los Alamos sea ice model | sea ice | CICE is a computationally efficient ice model designed for use in coupled simulations of the climate. | ESPS documentation | |
| FV3 | Finite Volume Cubed Sphere (FV3) | atmosphere | NOAA GFDL'sFinite Volume Cubed Sphere (FV3) dynamical core was selected as the foundation for the NWS Unified Forecast System (UFS). | FV3GFS VLab Community | |
| GSI | Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation | data assimilation | The Community Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) system is a variational data assimilation system, designed to be flexible, state-of-art, and run efficiently on various parallel computing platforms. The GSI system is in the public domain and is freely available for community use. It is used in the data assimilation system for many NCEP operational systems (GFS, NAM, RAP/HRRR, RTMA/URMA, HWRF, and HMON). | GSI Community Users page at DTC | |
| GSM | Global Spectral Model | atmosphere | The atmospheric forecast model used in the GFS, built on spherical harmonic basis functions. | ESPS documentation | Shrinivas Moorthi |
| HYCOM | HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model | ocean | A three-dimensional depiction of the ocean state at fine resolution in real time with provision of boundary conditions for coastal and regional models, and with provision of oceanic boundary conditions for a global coupled ocean-atmosphere prediction models. | ESPS documentation | |
| IPE | Ionosphere Plasmasphere Electrodynamics model | space weather | A time dependent, three-dimensional model of ionosphere and plasmasphere | ESPS documentation | |
| KISS | Keeping Ice's Simplicity | sea ice | A simple ice model. | ESPS documentation | |
| LIS-Noah | Land Information System - Noah Land Surface Model | land surface | The Land Information System (LIS) is a software framework for high performance terrestrial hydrology modeling and data assimilation developed with the goal of integrating satellite and ground-based observational data products and advanced modeling techniques to produce optimal fields of land surface states and fluxes. | ESPS documentation | |
| MOM | Modular Ocean Model | ocean | MOM is a numerical ocean model based on the hydrostatic primitive equations. | ESPS documentation | |
| NMMB | Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model on the B-Grid | atmosphere | The NMMB is designed to be a flexible, state of the art atmospheric simulation system that is portable and efficient on available parallel computing platforms. | ESPS documentation | |
| WAVEWATCH III® | WAVEWATCH III® | wave | A wave modeling framework that produces wave forecasts every 3 hours out to 180 hours. | ESPS documentation | |
| WRF-Hydro | Weather Research and Forecasting Model Hydrological Modeling Extension | hydrological | The WRF-Hydro model coupling extension package provides a means to couple hydrological model components to atmospheric models and other Earth System modeling architectures. | ESPS documentation |
Modeling applications and suites rely on frameworks and utilities that perform general functions.
| Short Name | Long Name | Description | Documentation and Code Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| NEMS | NOAA Environmental Modeling System | NEMS is infrastructure used for building and coupling a collection of modeling applications within a unified framework. It is based on the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). | NEMS home page, CoupledNEMS site on CoG, NEMS User's Guide |
| NCEPLibs | National Centers for Environmental Prediction Libraries | NCEPLibs are a set of commonly used libraries. | NCEPLibs documentation |