Article I - Scope
This Implementing Arrangement describes the scientific and
technical activities to be undertaken by the American Institute
in Taiwan (AIT), through its designated representative, the
Global System Division (GSD), (formally the Forecast Systems
Laboratory) of the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),
United States Department of Commerce. It provides for continuing
development of the forecast system being developed by the Joint
Forecast Systems Project. This project is a cooperative effort
between the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), the designated
representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural
Representative Office in the United States (TECRO), and AIT ’ s
designated representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD. This Implementing
Arrangement is of mutual interest to both TECRO and AIT,
hereafter referred to as the parties. The products of this
Implementing Arrangement will provide substantial value through
development of new and upgraded capabilities and applications
that can be integrated into other NOAA/ESRL/GSD systems.
Article II - Authorities
The activities described in this Implementing Arrangement will
be carried out under the general terms and conditions
established by the Agreement between the Taipei Economic and
Cultural Representative Office in the United States and the
American Institute in Taiwan for Technical Cooperation in
Meteorology and Forecast Systems Development (TECRO-AIT
Agreement), and any subsequent revision as agreed to by the
parties. This Implementing Arrangement is the twenty second such
arrangement under a succession of umbrella agreements between
TECRO and AIT.
This Implementing Arrangement is hereby attached to that
Agreement and becomes part of the Agreement.
Article III - Services
During the period of Implementing Arrangement #22, TECRO ’ s
and AIT ’ s designated representatives respectively, the CWB
and NOAA/ESRL/GSD joint team, will expand our work to address
the hazardous weather theme. Nine tasks are identified as: (1)
development and improvement of satellite products for tropical
storm monitoring and prediction, (2) Realtime analysis and
forecasting with ARPS system, (3) Improvement and verification
of short range forecasting using STMAS with remote sensing data,
(4) HRQ2 (High-resolution Quantitative Precipitation Estimation
and Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) applications
improvement, (5) Enhancement of nowcasting decision assistance
tools, (6) Development of high resolution product generation
assistance tools, (7) Installation of NOAA Science On a SphereR
(SOS), (8) GPS Radio Occultation satellite data assimilation
using the NCEP/JCSDA Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI)
analysis system, and (9) Continuing interaction on earlier
cooperative projects. Tasks under this Implementing Arrangement
range from full scale developmental collaboration to system
upgrades and support that allow systems to operate with the
latest technical and scientific capabilities and specifications.
These ongoing activities, described in more detail in the
Statement of Work, will include the following nine tasks:
Task #1 Develop and improve satellite products for tropical
storm monitoring and prediction
Primary hazards from tropical cyclones including storm surge,
inland flooding and wind damage (directly from the storm winds
and from typhoon-spawned tornados). Preparing for these hazards
requires accurate forecasting of storm tracks, storm
intensities, sizes of storm wind field, and precipitation. These
forecasts are currently obtained from numerical model
predictions and from simpler empirically-based techniques. The
United States (NOAA/NESDIS and NASA) has invested in satellite
products from operational and research satellites that can be
used for storm monitoring and forecasts. But, the product
quality needs to be improved further under severe storm
conditions. Also, transition of existing algorithms and products
to operational centers needs to be improved and accelerated.
During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, agrees that NOAA/NESDIS (National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service) will
lead this task. NESDIS will provide the access to advanced
microwave satellite products, product analysis system and
algorithms for SST and SSW products from the Aqua satellite.
NESDIS will also provide improved microwave sounding products
and the data processing system from AMSU (Advanced Microwave
Sounding Unit) and SSMIS (Special Sensor Microwave Imager and
Sounder).
In order to demonstrate the forecast improvement value of using
satellite data, NESDIS will improve the quality control software
for microwave sounding products, develop tangent linear and
adjoints of clouds and moisture physics, and demonstrate the use
of microwave sounding products over land in the NWP system. This
task will benefit TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, in
improving the use of satellite products for tropical storms ’
monitoring and prediction.
Task #2 Real-time analysis and forecasting with ARPS system
The ARPS (Advanced Regional Prediction System) has been
developed at the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms
(CAPS) at the University of Oklahoma. The ARPS a comprehensive
regional to storm-scale atmospheric modeling system. It is a
complete system that includes a realtime data analysis and
assimilation system, a forward prediction model and a
post-analysis package. The assimilation of radar and other
high-resolution observations for convective-scale forecasting is
a noted strength of the ARPS system. The 3DVAR-cloud analysis
package of ARPS is a computationally efficient for producing
convective-scale initial condition including radar data, while
ARPS ’ s Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) data assimilation system
promises to provide optimal initial conditions for both
deterministic and ensemble predictions when computational
resources become available.
During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, agrees that CAPS at the
University of Oklahoma will lead this task. CAPS will set up an
ARPS domain within the CWB ’ s Nonhydrostatic Forecast System
(NFS) model, assimilating radar data for CWB ’ s initial ARPS
Forecast System. TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, will
provide support to set up CWB ’ s HPC systems for running the
ARPS Forecast System at CWB. CAPS will perform case studies for
heavy precipitation cases, that include the evaluation of domain
size, computational requirements and configurations for HPC
platforms, as well as forecast performance evaluation. This task
will benefit TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, in
improving its short-range forecasting capabilities, in
particular, those related to heavy precipitation.
Task #3 – Improvement and verification of short-range
forecasting using STMAS with remote sensing data
STMAS (Space and Time Multi-scale Analysis System) is a new and
advanced data assimilation technique with a superior analysis
advantage. STMAS combines the advantages of objective analysis
and modern variational analysis into a unified data assimilation
system and removes the limitations of these data assimilation
schemes. During the past few years, TECRO ’ s designated
representative, CWB, has demonstrated its benefit from using
this system for its operational applications especially for
surface analysis and verification against observation data.
During Implementing Arrangement #22, two STMAS tasks will be
performed by AIT ’ s designated representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD;
one is STMAS surface analysis, and the other is STMAS 3D system
implementation. The surface analysis is mainly used for CWB
weather reanalysis to provide the ground-truth for establishing
climatology statistics. The STMAS 3D system can further improve
CWB weather reanalysis using upper air datasets to overcome the
complex terrain effect.
Under the STMAS surface analysis task, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will modify the software package
to improve the performance against complex terrain problems in
Taiwan to meet the application requirement for TECRO ’ s
designated representative, CWB. Also, the AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will start developing a
multi-grid 4DVAR system to handle terrain changes.
With support of AIT ’ s designated representative,
NOAA/ESRL/GSD, TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, will
perform a 3-year reanalysis with calibrated parameters for
STMAS, such as length-scale, multi-grid levels, smoothing and
penalty function for various reanalysis fields such as P, T, Td,
U, V and precipitation. For a longer-term reanalysis, a careful
verification is required to examine each of the reanalysis
fields and to build up climatology verification statistics.
These verification statistics can provide valuable evidence for
further improvement of STMAS surface analysis in the future.
Under the STMAS 3D system implementing task, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will assimilate all conventional
data and radar radial wind, perform case studies, and initialize
the WRF model with STMAS 3D at the GSD facility. AIT ’ s
designated representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will start the model
forecast process using the STMAS analysis, and develop a
hot-start capability using the STMAS 3D radar reflectivity
analysis operator. This will be applied to the CWB regional
models for improving short range forecasts. TECRO ’ s
designated representative, CWB, and AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will collaborate on the
verification and model initialization of the STMAS 3D system.
This task will benefit TECRO ’ s designated representative,
CWB, in improving and verifying short range forecasting
operations.
Task #4 – HRQ2 (High-Resolution Quantitative Precipitation
Estimation and Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) applications
improvement
During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, agrees that the National Severe
Storms Laboratory (NSSL) will continue research towards
refinement, development, and maintenance of HRQ2 applications
required for TECRO ’ s designated representatives, CWB, Water
Resources Agency (WRA), and the Soil and Water Conservation
Bureau (SWCB) operations. The NSSL research is directed towards
the integration of the dual-pol (dual-polarization) radar
applications in the HRQ2 system.
This task will include the integration of the dual-pol radar
reflectivity and the radar QPE in the real-time HRQ2 system to
support CWB operations. This task will perform an initial
evaluation of the real-time reflectivity mosaic and QPE with
dual-pol radar.
Two brand-new C-band dual-pol radars have been installed in
Taiwan (RCMK at Makung and RCCK at Ching Chung Kung). These
radars will add new capability to measure rainfall and
discriminate hydrometer types. These two radars and a CWB radar
at Chi-Kuo will provide excellent area coverage over the western
Taiwan. NSSL will implement a hydrometer classification
algorithm and a QPE merging algorithm encompassing the dual
polarized radars. NSSL will make available to the CWB, as
requested, software source code for the hybrid scan reflectivity
module, dual-pol hydrometer classification module and dual-pol
QPE module.
Task #5 – Enhancement of nowcasting decision assistance tools
During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, agrees that the Meteorological
Development Laboratory (MDL) will provide technical support to
the TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, to enhance CWB ’
s current forecast workstation, called the Weather Integration
and Nowcasting System (WINS), in the area of nowcasting decision
assistance tools. One of the MDL missions is to develop a
comprehensive suite of decision assistance tools, called SCAN
(System for Convection Analysis and Nowcasting), implemented in
AWIPS to cover the full scope of hydro-meteorological phenomena
and forecaster responsibilities. The current MDL activity is to
migrate SCAN from AWIPS to AWIPS II.
One of the SCAN suites is SAFESEAS (System on AWIPS for
Forecasting and Evaluation of Seas and Lakes), which is a
decision assistance tool engineered to continuously monitor
marine and adjacent overland conditions for specific marine
weather hazards. It automatically alerts CWB forecasters when
such conditions are detected. SAFESEAS provides capabilities to
display observed marine conditions in ways that help CWB focus
on the most important events. Thus, the benefit of SAFESEAS is
to assist CWB in making fast, earlier, and higher-quality
decisions regarding marine watches and warnings.
During Implementing Arrangement #22, MDL will provide SAFESEAS
technical support and customize the thresholds at which
conditions will be considered threatening and the thresholds at
which conditions will be considered hazardous. MDL will also
provide experience to CWB forecasters for training and
evaluation of using other decisions assistance tools such as
FFMPA (Flash Flood Monitoring and Prediction Advanced), and the
preliminary ANC (AutoNowCaster) system.
Task #6 – Development of high-resolution forecast product
generation assistance tools
During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will continue providing technical
support on GFE, and Text Formatter (TF) and GHG (Graphical
Hazards Generator) to support CWB ’ s development of formatter
infrastructure of FIES (Forecast Information Editing System).
CWB plans to implement its own rule-based Chinese text formatter
to provide a heavy rainfall report. GSD will also provide
necessary training to CWB visitor(s) to implement such a Chinese
text formatter system as part of CWB ’ s FIES.
GFE/verification system software training (BOIVerify) was
coordinated by the AIT ’ s designated representative,
NOAA/ESRL/GSD, to TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB,
during Implementing Arrangement #21. GSD will continue to
coordinate necessary forecaster training of using BOIVerify
during hazardous weather situations during Implementing
Arrangement #22. The benefit of this task is for the TECRO ’ s
designated representative, CWB, to establish its text formatter
infrastructure and assistance tools to support the high
resolution forecast product generation.
Task #7 – Installation of NOAA Science On a SphereR (SOS)
Science On a SphereR (SOS) is a large visualization system that
uses computers and video projectors to display animated data
onto the outside of a sphere. SOS can display dynamic, animated
images of atmosphere, oceans, earthquakes, and the land of a
planet. During Implementing Arrangement #22, AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will provide standard SOS
implementation, consultation, setup and training to the TECRO ’
s designated representative, CWB. GSD will also provide
currently available NOAA SOS education content material and will
provide training to enhance presentation skills during
installation. CWB will be responsible for all necessary hardware
procurements and site facility preparations associated with the
SOS system. The benefit of SOS is for CWB to possess an
excellent visualization tool to expand meteorological services
with local government agencies and to promote public education
of hazardous weather monitoring and forecasting for educational
institutions.
Task # 8 – GPS Radio Occultation satellite data assimilation
using the NCEP/JCSDA Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI)
analysis system
As part of the COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for
Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate) mission, TECRO ’ s
designated representative, CWB, will support the inclusion of
GPS Radio Occultation (RO) observations from the COSMIC mission
into the NCEP ’ s regional system to implement the Gridpoint
Statistical Interpolation (GSI) data assimilation of GPS radio
occultation data under the joint collaboration project between
NOAA/NASA/DoD, JCSDA and CWB. NCEP is the National Centers for
Environmental Prediction under NOAA ’ s NWS. JCSDA (Joint
Center for Satellite Data Assimilation) is a multi-agency
research center tasked with improving the use of satellite data
for analyzing and predicting weather, the ocean, climate and the
environment. JCSDA partner agencies are NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration), NOAA and DoD (Department
of Defense).
The main objectives of this collaborative project are to tune
and test the assimilation of GPS RO data in the NCEP regional
system and to accelerate and enhance the use of GPS RO data in
global numerical weather prediction at CWB. Currently, TECRO ’
s designated representative, CWB, is performing global numerical
weather prediction using its own global model and an older
version of the NCEP data assimilation system, the Spectral
Statistical Interpolation (SSI). Through this collaboration, CWB
would enhance their global data assimilation system and make
optimal use of satellite data, including COSMIC/FORMOSAT-3.
Accordingly, CWB would migrate from SSI (Spectral Statistical
Interpolation) to GSI, and initialize the CWB global model with
an analysis generated by GSI. This task will cover the use of
GSI for both global and regional capabilities. In exchange, CWB
will contribute to the tuning and testing of the GPS RO
assimilation in the regional model.
Task #9 - Continuing interaction on earlier cooperative projects
Several earlier cooperative tasks have been completed.
Technology has been transferred successfully and is beginning to
be used operationally at the facilities of TECRO ’ s designated
representative, CWB. NOAA/ESRL/GSD ’ s development activities
in these areas will continue, and further NOAA/ESRL/GSD-CWB
interaction is important to keep CWB staff up-to-date on current
developments. This task will directly improve and update CWB ’
s current forecast assistant and decision making system at an
appropriate level, including new AWIPS and relevant forecast
assistant application software releases and available documents.
AIT ’ s designated representative, NOAA/OAR/GSD, has released
the latest AWIPS OB 8.3.1 and necessary test datasets to TECRO
’ s designated representative, CWB, near the end of 2008. This
version is the one currently used by NOAA/NWS. This version is
ready to accept dual-pol radar products and has the capability
to integrate radar data with environment sampling of
temperature, relative humidity, wind, equivalent potential
temperature, wet-bulb temperature, and pressure at the height of
the radar beam. CWB will access data from two new dual-pol
radars soon, so this new radar product display capability will
be extremely useful for its forecast and decision making
operation. NOAA/ESRL/GSD will continue to make available any
latest AWIPS-build software, and technical support of AWIPS
applications such as warning tools (WarnGen, GHG) if applicable,
during Implementing Arrangement #22.
Under a NOAA/NWS contract to the Raytheon Technical Services
Company (since 2005), a next generation of AWIPS (called AWIPS
II) is being developed. AWIPS II is based on Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA). AIT ’ s designated representative,
NOAA/ESRL/GSD, is tasked with performing an Independent
Validation and Verification (IV &V) for each task order released
by Raytheon. NOAA/ESRL/GSD plans to share some of its experience
with AWIPS II in the area of SOA, EDEX (Environmental Data
Exchange handles data ingest, storage and communication) and
CAVE (Common AWIPS Visualization Environment is the graphical
user interface) with CWB, if appropriate, during Implementing
Arrangement #22.
AIT ’ s designated representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, has a long
history of supporting research and operational weather
forecasting by developing advanced prototype workstation display
systems, including an ongoing ALPS (AWIPS Linux Prototype
System) development, which is an update of AWIPS, and FXC
(FX-Collaborate) development. FXC is an Internet-based system
for displaying data from AWIPS with additional drawing and
briefing tools. CWB has interest in adopting the ensemble
forecast products display tool from ALPS.
For the data feed support, AIT ’ s designated representative,
NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will continue to provide the NOAAPORT data feed
for CWB ’ s data assimilation purposes during Implementing
Arrangement #22.
This continuing interaction task will benefit TECRO ’ s
designated representative, CWB, with the updated knowledge of
the forecast assistant and decision making system developed at
NOAA. This task also provides the important data feed of
NOAAPORT for CWB ’ s daily numerical weather prediction
operation needs. Finally, AIT ’ s designated representative,
NOAA/ESRL/GSD, will provide necessary training and support to
visitors and forecasters, continue the exchange of visits,
provide necessary papers and reports, and continue our e-mail
interactions, if applicable.
Article IV - Responsibilities of TECRO
In addition to participation in the joint project team, TECRO
through its designated representative, CWB shall:
A. Provide overall coordination project activities at the CWB
facility;
B. Assign appropriate staff to perform the activities defined in
this Implementing Arrangement and provide support in
accordance with the terms of the umbrella agreement; and
C. Fulfill its responsibilities under the Statement of Work for
Implementing Arrangement #22.
Article V - Responsibilities of AIT
In addition to participation in the joint project team, AIT,
through its designated representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD shall:
A. Provide overall coordination project activities at the
NOAA/ESRL/GSD facility in Boulder, Colorado;
B. Provide administrative support for preparing reports for
delivery to TECRO ’ s designated representative, CWB, in
accordance with this Implementing Arrangement;
C. Assign appropriate staff to perform the activities defined in
this Implementing Arrangement and provide support in
accordance with the terms of the umbrella agreement; and
D. Fulfill its responsibilities under the Statement of Work for
Implementing Arrangement #22.
Article VI - Financial Provisions
In accordance with the TECRO-AIT Agreement, TECRO is required to
reimburse AIT for all costs incurred by AIT ’ s designated
representative, NOAA/ESRL/GSD, in association with the project
covered by this Implementing Arrangement. AIT shall transfer to
NOAA/ESRL/GSD all payments made by TECRO to AIT for costs
incurred by NOAA/ESRL/GSD in association with this Implementing
Arrangement.
The total cost for activities described in this Implementing
Arrangement is mutually agreed to be U.S. $1,620,000. TECRO
agrees to transfer fifty percent of the funds to AIT in advance,
with the remaining fifty percent to be transferred upon
completion of the year ’ s activities, to the extent that funds
for this purpose have been provided by TECRO.
The performance by AIT ’ s designated representative of
activities under this Implementing Arrangement is subject to the
availability of funds.
Article VII - Intellectual Property Considerations
No intellectual property considerations are expected to arise in
conjunction with activities described in this Implementing
Arrangement. Existing system designs and computer software of
the AIT ’ s designated representative ’ s, NOAA/ESRL/GSD,
Forecast System are in the public domain. Reports,
specifications, and computer software prepared under this
Implementing Arrangement also will be in the public domain once
NOAA and CWB have approved them in final form.
Article VIII - Effective Date, Amendment, and Termination
This Implementing Arrangement is effective on the date of the
last signature hereto. This Implementing Arrangement may be
amended and/or terminated in accordance with the terms of the
Agreement. The estimated completion date for the activities
described in this Implementing Arrangement and the termination
date of this Implementing Arrangement is December 31, 2010.
FOR THE TAIPEI ECONOMIC AND FOR THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE IN
CULTURAL REPRESENTATIVE OFFICE TAIWAN
IN THE UNITED STATES
TaTung Chang Barbara J. Schrage
Deputy Representative Managing Director
July 19, 2010 May 7, 2010