P35     Increased momentum toward unified verification and diagnostic evaluation of NCAR community models.

Jensen, Tara L., John Halley Gotway, Michael Ek, NCAR/RAL, Chris Davis, Jimy Dudhia, NCAR/MMM, and Andrew Gettleman, NCAR/CGD

NCAR currently has many tools that can be applied to the evaluation and diagnostic model development process. These tools include the enhanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus), climate verification tools for the Community Earth System Model (CESM).  Unified evaluation has three goals: (1) to use approaches that are compatible and interoperable to the extent possible; (2) to help unify modeling approaches across time and space scales; and (3) to integrate different communities to share collaborative interpretation of diagnostic results.

METplus includes the core statistical tools in MET, METviewer (database analysis tool), and a suite of wrappers to assist with easy set-up, low-level workflow, and plotting.  METplus has been applied to everything from CESM simulations, to high-resolution 15-minute convection permitting simulations, and evaluation of tropical cyclone forecasts.  While it doesn’t embody all standard verification and diagnostic capabilities yet, its suite of tools is growing exponentially by the month.  Recent efforts have been focused on developing a unified verification and diagnostic framework for NOAA’s Unified Forecast System.  NCAR’s System for Integrated Modeling of the Atmosphere (SIMA) initiative could benefit greatly from the progress to date.  This presentation will highlight most recent enhancements to METplus and highlight where SIMA and UFS diagnostic efforts intersect.