Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS) Technology Transfer Steve Albers, Brent Shaw, and Ed Szoke NOAA – Earth System Research Laboratory

Introduction Environmental Support for Fire Weather Analysis National Weather Service . Used for data assimilation, nowcasting, Space Launch Operations and Prediction . LAPS has been part of the NWS oper- and model initialization / post-processing . Collaborators: Lockheed-Martin, USAF . Used by national and regional wildfire ational AWIPS since the late 1980s . Wide variety (~150) of group and individ- . LAPS/MM5 system installed at both U.S. managers. . Forecasters use LAPS to help identify: ual users space launch ranges (Cape Canaveral . Demonstrated real-time fire weather pro- - convergence zones . Federal and state agencies (e.g. National AFS, FL and Vandenberg AFB, CA) ducts for one of the five regional centers - - severe weather parameters Weather Service, United States Air Force . First operational modeling system in U.S. Fire Consortia for Advanced Modeling of - changes in instability using point soundings (USAF), and the California Department of government running on an affordable Meteorology and Smoke (FCAMMS). - conditions that support precipitation banding Water Resources)‏ Linux cluster - fully integrated with the (presence of CSI, etc) - heavy precipitation High- . Private Sector AWIPS system resolution . Academia (e.g. University of Hawaii) . Prototype for the Weather Forecast Office (4km grid) . International (e.g. Taiwan Central forecast of Weather Bureau, FMI)‏ Convective Ventilation . Meets NOAA Weather and Water Goals Available Index and (observation integration, hazard predic- Potential PBL winds tion, external collaboration, technology Energy identify transfer, decision support, resource man- (CAPE) dense agement) helps smoke thunderstorm hazards. forecasts at Cape Upslope Moisture Flux LAPS/WRF forecast Canaveral. Fire Impact Diagnostic Fields identifies heavy precipitation potential for California water resource management . Local observations include ASOS, wide- . Ventilation Index and PBL Winds band WSR-88D reflectivity/radial velocity, . PBL Height meteorology towers, RTAMPS balloons, . Haines Index (Low, Mid, High)‏ SODAR, wind and RASS profilers. . Fosberg Fire Weather Index . Combined with national data sets such as . LAPS Fire Weather Potential Index GOES imagery, narrowband WSR-88D, . Tabular User-Defined Point Forecasts METARs, and ACARS to make a com- . Standard Surface and Upper-Air Fields plete data assimilation system. Triple nested MM5 domains (10, 3, 1 km) Non-Supercell Tornado environment LAPS Analyses for 10km resolve terrain- BlueSky smoke parameter prediction (developed at domain centered in Colorado driven flow dispersion LaCrosse, Wisconsin WFO) missing from LAPS Attributes model hazard . LAPS is used to initialize and update large-scale prediction using model. short-term gridded forecasts . Blends a wide variety of global, national LAPS-initialized Compare with . Initializes high-resolution local scale data sets and local data sets (e.g. MM5 forecast NCEP Eta models run at WFOs (e.g. MIA, SAC) METARs and mesonets)‏ for the SW US. streamlines . AWIPS-II workstation plan includes LAPS . Utilizes large-scale numerical weather (tan). prediction models as backgrounds “Forecasters at my office integrate LAPS Collaborators analyses and surface observations with . LAPS analyses are used to initialize Reliable, inexpensive, . NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory radar data for a combined radar-environ- mesoscale forecast models (e.g. MM5, high-performance . USDA Forest Service mental analysis.” RAMS, WRF)‏ computing solutions Ray Wolf, WFO SOO - Davenport, Iowa . Adjustable horizontal, vertical, and for local forecast . Rocky Mountain Research Station temporal resolution offices using Linux . Fire and Environmental Research He also noted that LAPS is commonly used . Highly portable and runs on inexpensive clusters Applications Team to examine convective parameters such as hardware: desk top to laptop . Northwest Regional Modeling Consortium CAPE and CIN.