NOAA takes first step toward developing new global weather model

Washington Post : The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced that it is updating its Global Forecast System (GFS) weather model. The new GFS will feature the FV3 dynamic core created by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The FV3 was chosen over other candidates primarily because of its computational efficiency, which is essential for running all the necessary weather and climate models. NOAA says the goals are to improve forecast accuracy beyond 8–10 days, to better model forecasts of hurricanes and their intensity, and to extend weather forecasts to 14 days in advance and extreme event forecasts to 3–4 weeks in advance. Now that a core has been selected, the next steps are to test and improve the weather-predicting algorithms and develop a method to assimilate all the data from satellites, weather balloons, and ground-based observations.