International Expansion of NOAA GSL Global Forecast Editor

Since 2021, scientists in the  Global Systems Laboratory  have been collaborating with nations across the globe to extend and implement the  Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System  (AWIPS2) and its associated tools,  Hazard Services  (HS) and the  Global Forecast Editor  (GFE).  This collaboration helps to bolster forecasting operations abroad, in countries such as Australia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.

• AWIPS2 is an advanced system for information processing, display, and telecommunications built by GSL for the NOAA National Weather Service.
• Hazard services is a multi-year, multi-phase effort to produce a powerful software package that modernizes how hazardous weather products are generated in AWIPS2.
• GFE is a grid-based graphical forecast system.

As part of the partnership, GSL also assisted with updating BOM’s existing GFE tools in order to function with the new high-resolution domain. This included updating the code to Python-3, implementing updated data processing methods to decrease run-time, and running regression tests to verify results.

The partnership with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Science Administration (PAGASA) delivered AWIPS-II functionality (including HS and GFE) for forecasting operations.

PAGASA’s implementation of AWIPS-II marks their transition from a manual forecasting process to an automatic and digital methodology.

GSL also collaborated with the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau (CWB) to help transition their legacy AWIPS-1 system (WINS) to the newer AWIPS-II platform. The team also enhanced the underlying AWIPS-II code, including the CAVE annotation (CAT+), Hazard Service functionality, and a GFE localized to CWB’s responsibilities. CAT+ helps to provide a centralized tool for map analyses.

Hazard services assists with actionable weather watch warnings and advisories as well as provides a conduit to harness the “Recommender” framework. The framework can use any meteorological dataset to suggest areas where hazardous weather may occur. Hazard Services and GFE are coupled to ensure consistency of gridded forecasts with watches, warnings, and advisories.