Development of an Arctic Regional Coupled UFS Application (UFS-Arctic)

Kristin Barton

NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory

Tuesday, Jan 13, 2026, 2:00 pm MT
DSRC Room GC402

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Abstract

The Arctic region is home to vital ecosystems, communities, and industries, including fisheries and shipping. To enhance forecasting capabilities in this rapidly changing environment, we are developing a fully-coupled, regional Arctic application within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) to provide short- to medium-range forecasts as a successor to the current experimental Coupled Arctic Forecast System (CAFS). Application development is focused on establishing a regional coupled Arctic configuration using the FV3 (CCPP), MOM6, CICE6, and Noah-MP components of UFS. The current configuration uses a nominal 10-km resolution grid for the ocean and ice, with a 50-km grid for the atmosphere. Initial and lateral boundary conditions are sourced from GEFSv13 Replay datasets for all components, with the ice domain chosen to ensure boundaries are ice-free. Future work will explore further resolution refinements and additional UFS components, such as WW3 and GOCART. In this talk, I will discuss recent progress and future goals of the UFS-Arctic project.

Bio: Kristin Barton joined the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory as a Research Physical Scientist in the Modeling and Data Assimilation Division in 2024. Her current work focuses on the development of a regional, coupled Arctic application within the Unified Forecast System. She received her Ph.D. in Physics and Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan in 2023, where she worked on improving tide modeling in MPAS-Ocean. She also holds a B.S. in Physics from Middle Tennessee State University.