UFS-AQM Community Version Capability Announcement

Highlighted below are features included in the community version which will also be included in the next UFS-AQM operational implementation:

• CMAQ upgraded from v5.2.1 to v5.4. This upgrade includes major code and science changes primarily related to gas and aerosol chemistry, dry deposition, and structural software upgrades (e.g., improved IO performance and configurability)⁽⁸⁾.
• Updates to physical parameterizations in all supported suites of the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP)⁽¹¹⁾. Major updates include changing the land surface model from Noah to Noah-MP(12), changing the planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme from K-EDMF to TKE-EDMF, changing the microphysics scheme from GFDL-MP to Thompson 2-moment MP, and enhanced gravity wave drag parameterization.
• There are updates to datasets including Global CEDS 2019 or 2023, OMI-HTAP 2019, HTAPv3 2018, and CAMS-TEMPO, in addition to higher-resolution anthropogenic emission datasets (e.g., year 2019 or 2022) using the Neighborhood Emission Mapping Operation (NEMO) dataset⁽¹³⁾, and the updated versions of static emissions inventories. The updated datasets include Global CEDS 2019 or 2023⁽¹⁴⁾, OMI-HTAP 2019⁽¹⁵⁾, HTAPv3 2018, and CAMS-TEMPO⁽¹⁶⁾.  Further emissions updates, including a dynamic Meteorology-Induced emission Coupler (MetEmis), are being developed and tested for different anthropogenic sources⁽¹³⁾. The updates to the forest subcanopy data, physics, and chemistry developed by atmospheric scientists at George Mason University and NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory, in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada improve predictions of boundary-layer ozone⁽⁷⁾.
• Updated NOAA Emission and Exchange Unified System (NEXUS)⁽¹⁷⁾ and AQM-utils⁽¹⁸⁾ submodules, which support UFS-AQM pre-and post-processing operations.
• Updated fire plume-rise parameterization supporting more physics-based smoke column injection and vertical distribution into the atmospheric column, slated to improve particulate matter prediction accuracy for wildfire events⁽¹⁹⁾.
• Other RAVEv2 fire emissions updates include refined speciation such as activation of VOCs, enhanced emission injection timing, and adjustment of day2/day3 emissions.

The UFS-AQM community version also includes three features not planned for the operational implementation:

• A MELODIES MONET⁽²⁰⁾-based evaluation utility that optionally runs following a UFS-AQM forecast or “offline” using pre-computed UFS-AQM experiments. The framework produces statistics and graphical output, allowing modelers to assess forecast performance across multiple observational datasets. The evaluation framework code is currently hosted in EPIC’s AQM-Eval⁽²¹⁾ repository.
• Pre-configured scientific use cases for AEROMMA and Fall Ozone with support for automated data staging and configuration from the NOAA-EPIC S3 bucket⁽²²⁾.
• An optional post-task comparing model outputs against a pre-established evaluation baseline.

There is additional work planned for UFS-AQM version 8 operational  implementation . Patrick Campbell et. al.’s UIFCW 2025 presentation provides an excellent overview of key UFS-AQM v8 features ^(7).

The EPIC UFS-AQM community version release is supported on Tier 1 platforms: Ursa, Gaea-C6, Orion/Hercules, and Derecho.

Interested users can get additional support via the UFS-SRW’s GitHub Discussions Q&A page.

Collaborators:

• Barry Baker (NOAA/National Weather Service – Environmental Modeling Division)
• Patrick Campbell (George Mason University/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Youhua Tang (George Mason University/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Kai Wang (Lynker, NOAA/National Weather Service)
• Beiming Tang (George Mason University/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Wei-Ting Hung (George Mason University)
• Wei Li (George Mason University/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Irena Ivanova (George Mason University/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Zachary Moon (University of Maryland/NOAA-Air Resources Laboratory)
• Ravan Ahmadov (NOAA-Global Systems Laboratory)
• Chan-Hoo Jeon (NOAA-EPIC, Science & Technology, Corp.)
• Ben Koziol (NOAA-EPIC, RedLine Performance Solutions, LLC)
• Michael Lueken (NOAA-EPIC, Tomorrow.io)
• Jong Kim (NOAA-EPIC, Science & Technology, Corp.

The code is hosted on GitHub. Publicly available data is provided through an AWS S3 bucket established as part of the NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD) Program. Computing resources used in the preparation of this release were provided by the NOAA High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program and NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL).

Acknowledgement:

This release was funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58),  NOAA Weather Program Office’s Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), Fire Weather and Air Quality (FWAQ)  and Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI) programs, the National Weather Service Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) modeling programs; and the NOAA Disaster Supplemental Program.

References:

1. Unified Forecast System (UFS). Ufs-Community/Ufs-Srweather-App. Python. February 26, 2020, Released January 20, 2026. https://github.com/ufs-community/ufs-srweather-app.
2.  “2.8. Air Quality Modeling (SRW-AQM) — UFS Short-Range Weather App User’s Guide Develop Branch Documentation Documentation.” Accessed January 21, 2026. https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/develop/UsersGuide/BuildingRunningTesting/AQM.html.
3. The UFS-AQM Online Prediction System for Enhanced Fire Predictability – Unified Forecast System. n.d. Accessed January 21, 2026.  https://www.ufs.epic.noaa.gov/2024/04/the-ufs-aqm-online-prediction-system-for-enhanced-fire-predictability/.
4. “CMAQ: The Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System | US EPA.” Accessed January 21, 2026. https://www.epa.gov/cmaq.
5. “FV3: Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core – Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.” Accessed January 22, 2026. https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/fv3/.
6.  Earth System Modeling Framework. “NUOPC Interoperability Layer.” Accessed January 22, 2026. https://www.earthsystemmodeling.org/nuopc/.
7. Campbell, Patrick C. “Advancements in NOAA’s Unified Forecast System-Air Quality Model (UFS-AQM) to Improve Our Nation’s Air Quality Forecasting Capabilities.” With Youhua Tang, Barry Baker, Kai Wang, et al. UIFCW, September 11, 2025. https://epic.noaa.gov/eventsposts/uifcw-2025/.
8. Li, Wei, Beiming Tang, Patrick C. Campbell, et al. “Updates and Evaluation of NOAA’s Online-Coupled Air Quality Model Version 7 (AQMv7) within the Unified Forecast System.” Geoscientific Model Development 18, no. 5 (2025): 1635–60. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1635-2025.
9. National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). “Global Forecast System (GFS).” August 12, 2020. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/weather-climate-models/global-forecast.

10. “CCPP SciDoc: GFS_v17_p8 Suite.” Accessed January 22, 2026. https://dtcenter.ucar.edu/GMTB/v7.0.0/sci_doc/_g_f_s_v17_p8_ugwpv1_page.html.

11.  “Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) | Dtcenter.Org.” Accessed February 4, 2026. https://dtcenter.org/software-tools/common-community-physics-package-ccpp.
12. “Noah-Multiparameterization Land Surface Model (Noah-MP® LSM) | Research Applications Laboratory.” Accessed February 4, 2026. https://ral.ucar.edu/model/noah-multiparameterization-land-surface-model-noah-mp-lsm.
13. Ma, Siqi, and Daniel Q. Tong. “Neighborhood Emission Mapping Operation (NEMO): A 1-Km Anthropogenic Emission Dataset in the United States.” Scientific Data 9, no. 1 (2022): 680. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01790-9.
14. “Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) for Historical Emissions | Climate & Clean Air Coalition.” Accessed January 21, 2026. https://www.ccacoalition.org/resources/community-emissions-data-system-ceds-historical-emissions.
15. Liu, Fei, Sungyeon Choi, Can Li, et al. “A New Global Anthropogenic SO2 Emission Inventory for the Last Decade: A Mosaic of Satellite-Derived and Bottom-up Emissions.” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 18, no. 22 (2018): 16571–86. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-16571-2018.
16. Guevara, Marc, Oriol Jorba, Carles Tena, et al. “Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service TEMPOral Profiles (CAMS-TEMPO): Global and European Emission Temporal Profile Maps for Atmospheric Chemistry Modelling.” Earth System Science Data 13, no. 2 (2021): 367–404. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-367-2021.
17. NOAA Air Resources Laboratory. Noaa-Oar-Arl/NEXUS. Fortran. July 22, 2020, Released November 13, 2025. https://github.com/noaa-oar-arl/NEXUS.
18. NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC). NOAA-EMC/AQM-Utils. Fortran. February 14, 2022, Released November 19, 2025. https://github.com/NOAA-EMC/AQM-utils.
19. GitHub. “Bbakernoaa/AQM at Feature/Betadist_shear_stability.” Accessed February 4, 2026. https://github.com/bbakernoaa/AQM.
20. NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR/MELODIES-MONET. Python. February 18, 2021, Released November 16, 2025. https://github.com/NCAR/MELODIES-MONET.
21.  “NOAA-EPIC/AQM-Eval: Scripts and Utilities Related to UFS-AQM Evaluation and Verification.” Accessed January 21, 2026. https://github.com/NOAA-EPIC/AQM-Eval.
22. “2.8. Air Quality Modeling (SRW-AQM) — UFS Short-Range Weather App User’s Guide Develop Branch Documentation Documentation.” Accessed January 22, 2026. https://ufs-srweather-app.readthedocs.io/en/develop/UsersGuide/BuildingRunningTesting/AQM.html#aqm-use-cases.