Ensuring a safe water supply for society and the sectors that rely on water for economic and environmental purposes is a difficult problem that needs significant investment in r & d across public…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded a $349,980 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program grant to Upstream PBC, a for-profit small business, to expand their HydroForecast seasonal prototype. The project aims to improve the methodology and data used for generating weather forecast inputs, integrate a new weather forecasting source to enhance accuracy at longer lead times, and benchmark performance in critical basins to benefit customers and society. This supports NOAA's mission areas of weather, climate, oceans, and coasts by advancing decision-making tools for water resource management in the face of climate change impacts. The grant has a performance period from September 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024.

Ensuring a safe water supply for society and the sectors that rely on water for economic and environmental purposes is a difficult problem that needs significant investment in r & d across public and private organizations. Climate change accelerates and exacerbates this challenge, causing a breakdown in some traditional approaches that use the past to predict the future streamflow on a seasonal (10 day to one year) horizon. Water managers planning on this seasonal timescale need help advancing models, tools, and transforming model results into actionable information for making decisions. In this phase i effort, upstream tech proposes to expand its hydroforecast seasonal prototype by achieving three technical objectives: 1) improve methodology and data used for generating weather forecast inputs, 2) integrate a new weather forecasting source to improve accuracy at longer lead times, and 3) benchmark performance in critical basins that benefit customers and society. At the conclusion