Weather Research and Forecasting

The Weather Research and Forecasting or WRF Model is one of the next level generation in mesoscale and numerical predictive weather systems used today to actively carry out specific atmospheric research in addition to operational and needed forecasting.

The Weather Research and Forecasting model has two specific and dynamic core features of a data assimilation and software architecture allowing the model to attain system extensibility and parallel computation effectively allowing it to service a wide cross section of applications relative to meteorological data spawning to thousands of kilometers.

The development of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model began in the late 1990’s through a collaboration of several agencies including, the National Center for Atmospheric Research or NCAR, the Air Force Weather Agency AFWA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA the Federal Aviation Administration and the University of Oklahoma OU.

The Weather Research and Forecasting effectively allows the development of simulated weather conditions by specific scientific researchers to reflect real life data through a series of careful observations and analysis of current conditions seen within the atmosphere.

The WRF provides a flexible and efficient computationally system and a fully operational platform through areas of advanced studies in physics, data assimilation and the use of numerical weather prediction by a vast amount of community research developers and is currently operating within the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the Air Force Weather Agency and a number of affiliated centers.

Weather forecasters are able to use Numerical weather prediction through a series of mathematical models of existing atmospheric conditions and oceanic activity to accurately predict future weather conditions. The first ever attempt using computer simulation was successfully completed in the 1950’s to provide accurate and realistic results thus predicting future weather events.

Today there are global and regional forecast models used in several countries worldwide to use existing weather conditions observed and from both weather satellites and radiosondes to input within specific weather models for forecasting.

Mathematical weather models used in weather forecasting are based on the same principles of physical activity to successfully generate short and long term climatic conditions of weather forecasts and vast improvements have been made to several regional models to effectively track and produce the occurrence of cyclonic activities and air quality. Atmospheric models however are seen to perform relatively poorly when observing conditions within constricted areas such as those seen during wildfires.

Today the WRF has grown to consist of a worldwide community with over twenty thousand active users within one hundred and thirty countries with workshops and tutorials conducted on a yearly basis at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research.