There presently exist critical technical and scientific gaps in our capability to rapidly translate the benefit from current and planned NASA earth observing satellite missions into operational…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded a $173,768 grant to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), operating as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), to develop an integrated terrestrial modeling and data assimilation framework. This framework will support the integration of data from current and planned NASA Earth observing satellite missions into operational weather and hydrologic prediction models, as well as research models for understanding land-atmosphere coupling. The work aims to address gaps in the capability to rapidly translate satellite data into operational weather, water, and climate predictions by creating a unified modeling system that can consistently represent key hydrologic variables. This grant-funded effort will leverage NCAR's expertise in computational modeling, data assimilation, and serving the broader environmental research community. The contract does not have a set-aside designation.

There presently exist critical technical and scientific gaps in our capability to rapidly translate the benefit from current and planned NASA earth observing satellite missions into operational weather and hydrologic predictions as well as into research models being developed to improve our understanding of land-atmosphere coupling behavior. Specifically, there currently does not exist a singular modeling capability, or framework , which supports fully-integrated terrestrial hydrologic data assimilation and forward model prediction of key hydrologic variables such as soil moisture, snowpack, streamflow, surface water levels, groundwater and coastal waters. This means that there are both scientific and methodological inconsistencies in how these terrestrial hydrologic processes are represented and constrained in our current weather, water and climate prediction systems. Work completed under this proposal directly meets this need by integrating two major research and operational modeling systems (the NASA land information system and the ncar WRF-hydro system) using earth system modeling framework (esmf) model coupling protocols and paradigms. The product of this work will be an esmf standards-based, fully-integrated terrestrial modeling and data assimilation framework which will support current and planned NASA earth observing missions, ongoing national weather service/national water center operational prediction systems and the broader environmental modeling research community.