Physical Sciences Laboratory Review 2020

Thematic Area 1: Predicting Extremes

Given the impacts of serious risk to health, economic development, and food security, improved prediction of subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) extreme weather and climate is a high priority to help NOAA meet mission responsibilities to provide early warning and informed preparedness. Subseasonal-to-seasonal forecasting bridges the gap between the more-mature weather forecast and seasonal prediction. S2S remains a challenging forecast time range with lead times too long for significant influence of atmospheric initial conditions, but too short for the variability of the ocean to have a strong influence, yet the S2S time range is critical for proactive disaster mitigation efforts. PSL researchers have applied expertise in characterizing and advancing prediction of subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) extreme weather and climate to improve NOAA’s ability to forecast, provide early warning and inform preparedness. Research has focused on advancing observationally-based physical process understanding, using field observations of air-sea-ice-land interactions to characterize surface fluxes, boundary-layer clouds, and energy balance to inform parameterization development and improve representation of stochastic and subgrid scale processes, enhancing ensemble-based data assimilation methods, applying statistical post-processing using reforecasts, developing and applying linear inverse and other models to diagnose and predict changes in extremes, exploring the influence of land surface conditions on predictability and development of reliable forecasts, and conducting attribution and predictability assessments of high-impact weather, water and climate extreme events.

Thematic Area 2: Water Resource Management

The stress of too little and too much water can be destabilizing at local, regional and national scales. Accurate water monitoring and predictions are critical for a variety of societal needs including agriculture, water supply, energy, water security, and public safety. Stakeholders need information ranging from current conditions to hours to seasons and beyond. NOAA Water Initiative and development of the National Water Model (NWM) provided an opportunity to improve water prediction at unprecedented time and space scales. PSL research has addressed significant challenges in characterizing uncertainty in hydrologic forcings, the coupling between atmosphere-terrestrial-coastal systems, and tailoring information products to inform risk management. PSL researchers have applied expertise in understanding, predicting, and assessing severity of water-related extreme events such as droughts and floods (including linkages between them), and coastal inundation. Research has focused on using observations to improve physical process understanding and guide model development for improved predictions, analyzing atmosphere, cryosphere, land surface, and air-sea interface processes, identifying the sources of forecast errors in the coupled meteorological and hydrological forecast system, and developing land and coupled land-atmosphere data assimilation capabilities, and applying targeted observations, observation-based understanding, and modeling capabilities to develop experimental guidance for hydrologic extremes critical to manage water resources.

Thematic Area 3: Marine Resource Management

U.S. coastal regions, including the U.S. territories in the Pacific and Caribbean, host a rich diversity of marine resources spanning the warm tropical waters to Arctic sea ice covered waters. Marine resources and ecosystems are critical to commerce, human health and coastal tourism. As pressures on marine resources continue to rise, there is a concomitant need for improved monitoring and prediction of weather, climate, and water conditions impacting the marine environment. PSL researchers have applied expertise in using targeted observations to advance process understanding and prediction of environmental conditions impacting marine resources. Research has focused on developing and evaluating sub-seasonal and seasonal forecast systems for the Arctic, coastal environments and ocean-bound rivers, developing end-to-end forecast systems that span ocean dynamics, ecosystem responses, and management decision making, developing empirical forecast methods to predict and forecast environmental conditions impacting marine resources, delineating the effects of climate variability and change on environmental conditions impacting marine resources, investigating and explaining ocean extremes, such as ocean heat waves and rapid changes in sea ice, and developing experimental products and services in support of marine resource management decision making by NMFS, NOS and external government agencies.