National Security Applications Program

Scott SwerdlinTerri Betancourt

Tom Warner

National Security Applications ProgramResearch Applications Laboratory

6 Nov, 2008

Mission Statement

• Significantly advance our understanding of mesoscale and urban-scale atmospheric processes, especially in the boundary layer, and our ability to forecast these atmospheric conditions operationally for the purpose of providing forecasters, decision makers, and emergency managers with accurate decision information to save lives and property.

Societal Needs

• Cities are vulnerable to industrial and transportation system accidents, and terrorist attacks involving toxic airborne releases

• Various fine-scale atmospheric modeling technologies could help to save lives

• Similar technologies are useful for climate change prediction and the impact on cities

• Urban meteorology and regional climate prediction are important topics in a variety of fields

NSAP’s Principal Elements

Regional NWP Modeling Turnkey NWP Systems

Climate Downscaling

NWP Model Customization

Building Protection Urban Protection

Advanced Data Assimilation Mesoscale Ensemble PredictionBL and Urban Meteorology

Highest Priorities

• Global and regional climatologies

• Modeling urban atmospheres

• Modeling plumes of hazardous materials

• Mesoscale ensemble prediction

Project Composition• U.S. Department of Defense

– Army • Test & Evaluation 4DWX• Future Combat Systems M&S

– Army Intelligence: CFDDA & T&D– DTRA

• Global CFDDA• Met Data Server• Coastal Urban• Next-generation WRF-RTFDDA• Basic Research BL• Coupled WRF-CFD• Sensor Data Fusion

– Missile Defense Agency: Hydrometeor Impacts

– Joint S&T Office: Portable Chem-Bio Test Grid R&D

• International– French military:

• CFDDA for French Army (2)• CFDDA for French Navy

– UCAR Africa Initiative: NWP in Ghana

– UAE Dept of Atm Sci in Abu Dhabi: NWP improvements

• Other– NASA:Improve Chem-Bio defense using

NASA sensors in NWP model over NYC– AirDat: NWP Forecast Improvements

from TAMDAR Sensors

• Pending (> 50% odds)– Xcel Energy operational

NWP component– Israeli Air Force NWP

improvements– Saudi govt: Impact of

Industrial Park Cooling Towers on Microclimate

Staff Composition (funded 50% or more by NSAP)

• 22 NWP modelers, 16 engineers, and 3 systems administrators

• Near-future anticipated hires: ~ 4 scientists, 4 engineers, and 1 sysadmin

STAR Institute: Science and Technology in Atmospheric Research

• STAR furthers NCAR’s mission by using shared IP to meet defense needs that NCAR cannot

• Incorporated in Colorado in Dec ’05, and now a 501(c)(3)• Debt free as of 4 Nov ‘08 ($400 k UCARF loan paid off)• 3 current contracts worth $2 M/yr• 2 full-time, 28 part-time employees• Facility cleared for SECRET ~10 cleared to date• Added security measures on site

Pentagon and urban Shield: Coupling NWP and T&D models from the

continental scale to street canyons

Animation

Frontiers

Develop software toolkit and best practices guidelines for experiments to allow quick response to stakeholders requiring climate projections

Develop modeling methods for better predicting urban weather for providing alerts of threat events like poor

air quality, flash-floods, heat waves, etc

Coupling numerical weather and climate prediction models with infectious disease decision support

processes