Co-Development of Ensemble Modeling Applications to Advance Stakeholder Capabilities at NASA SERVIR Regional Hubs

The SERVIR program, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development, has a long-standing record of successful capacity building and transition of Earth observations and technologies to the program’s various hubs across the world. The SERVIR program currently has established hubs in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region of South-Central Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, South America, and Central America. One such capacity-building success has been the High Impact Weather Assessment Toolkit (HIWAT) – a customizable ensemble numerical weather prediction package designed to provide probabilistic guidance for intense thunderstorm hazards such as lightning, high winds, flooding rainfall, and large hail. HIWAT provides similar severe weather numerical forecast capabilities found at the NCEP Storm Prediction Center to SERVIR partner organizations in need of high-resolution, reliable forecasting approaches to address societal vulnerabilities to thunderstorm hazards.

HIWAT was first deployed in the HKH region starting in 2018 to capture severe thunderstorm hazards during the pre-monsoon and wet-monsoon seasons. The applications of HIWAT have subsequently been extended to other high-impact features such as extreme temperatures, flash flood prediction, and wildfire threat. The HIWAT-HKH was fully transitioned to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Nepal; meanwhile, the demand for convection-allowing prediction capabilities has broadened to other regions and institutions across SERVIR’s global network, including the Bangladesh Meteorological Department, and most recently at El Salvador’s Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (MARN).

The current co-development being conducted with MARN includes an on-site training workshop that was held in San Salvador, El Salvador in February 2024. The workshop consisted of theoretical and hands-on training topics and interactive discussions to better understand the operational needs of MARN stakeholders. Co-development efforts are underway to customize and transition the HIWAT operational scripts for the specific needs of the region. Initial efforts include applying the analysis technique to a “mini-ensemble” of archived model runs managed by MARN over the past several years. By first applying the ensemble techniques to archived local numerical predictions, MARN seeks to gain a better understanding of the predictability of severe weather in the region, with the goal to implement a real-time HIWAT ensemble prediction system in the near future, vital for decision-making in the region. MARN has already acquired and configured a high-performance computing cluster to support real-time ensemble simulations for its operational requirements. This presentation will highlight the capacity-building process within SERVIR and underscore the current efforts to deploy HIWAT within MARN to achieve a fully operational ensemble forecasting system.