Weather forecasts produced by the National Weather Service (NWS) are widely used in the ecological forecasting community to provide atmospheric inputs to ecological forecasts. Temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, wave action, coastal inundation, inland flooding and other parameters affect a broad range of ecosystems from microbiology community dynamics to public health, with extreme weather events being particularly impactful. Many ecological forecasts using deterministic inputs have not been reliable enough for decision making, however, ensemble models provide uncertainty quantification that can enhance ecological forecasts. The next several years will see important evolution of the NWS modeling suite that includes multiple models spanning time and space scales. This evolution is driven by the Unified Modeling System (UFS), a community developed, simplified modeling suite, that will be more cost effective to maintain and improve. The advancement of the NWS modeling suite is also driven by the modeling "moonshot" which envisions a global convection allowing models running at 3 kilometer resolution with a variable mesh capability to run regions at even higher resolution resulting in more ecologically applicable data streams. This talk will present an overview of the NWS modeling roadmap, including the evolution of the Global Forecast System and Global Ensemble Forecast System (GFS and GEFS) models from the FV3 dynamical core to the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) core and the replacement of some rapid refresh, high resolution and regional models such as the North American Mesoscale (NAM) model and their ensemble versions with the new Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS).

Keywords: Weather ensemble roadmap global regional