A new study in the Nature Partner Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science describes a breakthrough in accurately predicting atmospheric river behavior several weeks ahead.

The NOAA MAPP Program, in partnership with NOAA Fisheries and participation by the NOAA National Ocean Service, has kicked off a new three-year Marine Prediction Task Force. To share their research and connect with scientists across broad marine science disciplines, Task Force members were in strong attendance at the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting.

Thanks to a team of scientists led by Nat Johnson, an Associate Research Scholar at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science at Princeton University, NOAA’s forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) now have a new tool that provides week 3-4 guidance for their precipitation outlooks, and even better guidance for their temperature outlooks — all while helping them understand what drives the weather we see several weeks from now. 
 

Check out research and program highlights, as well as MAPP Task Force updates.

The National Weather Service (NWS) recently reviewed four NOAA Climate Test Bed (CTB) MAPP program projects to evaluate whether or not some of the new research capabilities tested during the projects are ready for operational use. The review revealed that all projects had some modeling methodologies and/or prediction tools ready to be implemented in operations or that have already officially transitioned, according to the NWS reviewers.