Technology alone is not the answer to the climate crisis. They are measures of the urgency of the issues we face. Ultimately, the tools provide the information, and people and their government act on that information to end pollution and warming.
By Matthew Cappuci
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (click here) announced Monday that a major upgrade has been applied to the American Global Forecast System model, one of the main computer models used to predict weather across North America and the world.
The newly minted upgrade, which went live at 8 a.m. Eastern time, is the latest in improvements designed to make for more accurate forecasts as far out as about two weeks into the future. NOAA says it will lead to better predictions of hurricanes and other extreme events, ocean waves and weather systems high in the atmosphere.
The upgrade focuses on addressing the underlying physics of the model and how it handles various features of the atmosphere. It’s known as version 16.0 of the model frequently referred to by forecasters as simply the GFS or the “American” model.
The upgrade piggybacks off the launch of the GFS FV3 model, or Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core, a souped-up version of the previous GFS model that debuted in summer of 2019. Its release was delayed while model biases were addressed, including a tendency for model depictions to skew too cold and snowy. After changes, the FV3 was released, fully replacing the legacy GFS model in September.
The latest upgrade focuses on addressing some additional biases. The upgrade also adjusts how initial conditions, or current weather information, are ingested into and processed by the model, while integrating more sources of data from weather satellites and ordinary aircraft....
