NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) Grant for Advancing Hurricane Prediction Science

The specific goals of the HFIP are to reduce the average errors of hurricane track and intensity forecasts by 20% within five years and 50% in ten years with a forecast period out to 7 days. The benefits of HFIP will significantly improve NOAA’s forecasts services through improved hurricane forecast science and technology. Forecasts of high accuracy and greater reliability (i.e., user confidence) are expected to improve public response, and save lives and property.

The goal of this notice is to promote and enhance NOAA’s collaboration with Principal Investigators (PIs) at academic institutions and private industry, and offer support of their expertise and experience to contribute towards the advancement of hurricane science and modeling to improve operational hurricane forecasts.

Improvements in tropical cyclone forecasting over the past two decades are largely attributed by both national and international communities to a wide range of advancements in NWP. These improvements have mainly been achieved by advancements in observational platforms, data assimilation techniques, and higher resolution global and regional hurricane prediction systems with improved model physics. The forecast improvements also have resulted from development of ensemble based guidance. These achievements have been made largely through investments in both science and technology that have directly benefited forecasts over the large scale tropics, the hurricane environment, and more recently, on the hurricane vortex scale. The range of activities that HFIP seeks to support is identified within the following themes:

* Increased usefulness of observations of large and vortex scale circulations in both global and high-resolution (e.g., regional) hurricane modeling systems.

* Advancement of data assimilation techniques for both large and vortex-scale circulations.

* Advancement of model development activities for both global- and high-resolution regional hurricane modeling systems.

* Enhanced development of high resolution ensemble based hurricane prediction systems to increase utility of numerical hurricane guidance for forecast applications.

* Characterizing the intrinsic predictability of tropical cyclone genesis, track, intensity, and rapid intensification.

Successful projects are expected to provide promising near term improvements to operational hurricane forecasts. This would be accomplished through transition of applicable and transferrable research modeling applications into operational hurricane systems within two-three years after completion of the funding period.

Projects to be funded will involve both research and operational high-resolution regional hurricane models such as the HWRF. Community support for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) s Advanced Hurricane Research WRF (AHW) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) operational Hurricane WRF (HWRF) can be obtained through NCAR Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology division (NCAR/MMM), and the Development Testbed Center (DTC) by visiting http://www.dtcenter.org/HurrWRF/users. Proposals that involve HWRF model development should include a plan for testing and evaluating the new capabilities. A hierarchy of testing should be proposed, ranging from do-no-harm to existing model capabilities, to case studies, to multi-season tests required for transition to operations. The latter comprehensive tests can be conducted by the DTC in collaboration with the PI.