Today, the National Weather Service announced major upgrades to its flagship weather model, the Global Forecast System (GFS), to boost weather forecasting capabilities. These advancements will improve hurricane formation forecasting, modeling for snowfall location, heavy rainfall forecasts, and overall model performance.
For the first time, the GFS will be coupled with a global wave model called WaveWatchIII that will extend current wave forecasts from 10 days out to 16 days and improve the prediction of ocean waves forced by the atmosphere. Coupling the GFS and wave models will streamline the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) production suite by consolidating atmospheric and wave forecast data and distributing them together. The GFS resolution will increase by doubling the number of vertical levels, from 64 to 127. Improvements to atmospheric physics will enhance snow and precipitation forecasting capabilities in this latest upgrade as well.
https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-upgrades-flagship-us-global-weather-model?fbclid=IwAR0bylkR09RdZY_XxqA1wyPWEyMFNHzI4Wr-x6660wLf_3qm1xG_gBSKuLk