UFS Land DA v3.0.0 Release
The Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), in close collaboration with the Unified Forecast System (UFS) community, has released version 3 of the UFS Land Data Assimilation (DA) System. This latest release represents a major advancement over the v2.0.0 released in October 2024, by delivering expanded modeling capabilities, broader platform support, and substantial improvements in workflow automation and usability. These enhancements are the result of months of focused development within the land‑DA_workflow and effectively address the evolving needs of the land modeling and DA research community. Land DA v3.0.0 introduces a more flexible and integrated workflow and expands its land-atmosphere modeling capabilities by integrating the ATMosphere-Land (ATML) coupling configuration of the UFS Weather Model. This enables interactive execution of the FV3 UFSATM atmospheric model with the Noah‑MP Land Surface Model (LSM). The v3.0.0 workflow also adds enhanced data‑forcing capabilities through the integration of ECMWF Reanalysis 5th-generation data (ERA5) via the Data ATmosphere Model (DATM) forcing component, along with updates to the ATML physics suite, including FV3_GFS_v17_p8_ugwpv1.
NOAA’s NESDIS Advances Global Soil Moisture Monitoring with SMOPS and UFS Land-DA
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NOAA-NESDIS) and Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) led effort delivers near-real-time, and high-resolution soil moisture products to support Earth System modeling applications worldwide.
NOAA Chooses MPAS to be the Next-Generation NWS Operational Model
At the annual American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting on January 26, 2026, the National Weather Service (NWS) Director, Ken Graham, announced an ambitious 10-year goal for NOAA to adopt a global, fully coupled, and convection allowing 3-km unified system using the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) for both research and operations.
Enabling Community Innovation Through an Innovative Approach to Sharing Modeling Containers
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Earth Prediction Innovation Center (NOAA-EPIC) implemented an innovative container architecture that preserves high-performance computing workflows while strengthening long-term distribution sustainability. Developed through collaboration with NOAA EPIC, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) container experts, and academic partners, the solution enables continued delivery of Unified Forecast System (UFS) applications through streamlining processes. This work now supports a community of more than 60,000 users across NOAA, academia, and industry by providing reliable, scalable access to numerical weather and Earth system modeling applications.
UFS-AQM Community Version Capability Announcement
The Unified Forecast System (UFS) community, in collaboration with the Earth Prediction Center (EPIC), is pleased to announce a new capability in UFS Short-Range Weather App (UFS-SRW) that includes the UFS-Air Quality Model (UFS-AQM) community version. The UFS-AQM community version is available in the UFS-SRW’s “develop” branch. The community version includes most of the features planned for the next operational implementation, UFS-AQM version 8, and will continue to incorporate developments from the UFS-AQM technical and scientific teams as they progress.
Expansion of HSD Framework: Addition of Aquaplanet Test Case
The NOAA Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), in collaboration with NOAA’s Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL), is pleased to announce the development and integration of an idealized aquaplanet test case into the Unified Forecast System Weather Model (UFS-WM) Hierarchical System Development (HSD) framework. Historically, aquaplanet idealized tests have been widely used to study interactions between the ocean and atmosphere by simplifying the complex interactions which exist in a fully-coupled Earth System Model (ESM) (i.e., by restricting interactions to ocean-atmosphere components, while removing land, sea ice, and other feedbacks). This reduction in complexity enables researchers to isolate key physical processes and discern more robust insights into the impact of their scientific and code innovations upon forecast skill and model performance. Two key features of most aquaplanet experiments are (1) the global replacement of all land and sea-ice with ocean and the removal of topography, thereby approximating the earth’s surface as an aquaplanet, and (2) the prescription of a fixed, analytically variant Sea Surface Temperature (SST) that is kept constant throughout the model run. These studies have demonstrated that only two years of simulation were sufficient to obtain meteorological features such as global and zonal means, eddy patterns, and precipitation distributions and have demonstrated that model changes did not impact global circulation, though they did alter cloud properties.
NOAA Deploys New AI Driven Global Weather Models
NOAA has deployed a new set of operational AI driven global weather prediction models making a major advancement in forecast speed, efficiency, and accuracy while using fewer computing resources.
Key highlights include the Artificial Intelligence Global Forecast System (AIGFS), the Artificial Intelligence Global Ensemble Forecast System (AIGEFS), and the Hybrid Global Ensemble Forecast System (HGEFS). Together, these models support faster forecast delivery, improved tropical cyclone track guidance, and better representation of forecast uncertainty by combining AI and physics-based approaches.
These efforts stem from Project EAGLE (Experimental AI Global and Limited-area Ensemble), a multi-year collaboration across OAR, NWS, academia, and industry to advance NOAA’s operational weather prediction capabilities. EPIC is a key member of this collaboration through the provision of software infrastructure and community engagement support. Full details on model performance and technical background are available in the official NOAA announcement.
UFS Insights Is Your Newsletter and EPIC Needs Your Voice
UFS Insights is a UFS community newsletter. While the EPIC team helps coordinate, edit, and publish each issue, the heart of the newsletter has always been and should continue to be the people across the UFS community who are building, testing, and using the Unified Forecast System.
Successful Deployment of UFS Weather Modeling Capabilities to NOAA’s New High-Performance Supercomputing System, Ursa
The EPIC Code Management team has successfully developed and integrated a new automated Jenkins pipeline for unit testing code changes in the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) Stochastic Physics repository. This pipeline streamlines the software development lifecycle by enabling Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Delivery (CD), and Continuous Deployment (CD) through an efficient, automated process. By simply adding a GitHub label to a pull request, EPIC Code Managers can now trigger unit tests and seamlessly progress through the CI/CD pipeline.
Advancing Weather Prediction with AI: EPIC Short Course at AMS 2026
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the most transformative tools in weather prediction, offering new ways to improve accuracy, efficiency, and scientific discovery. To help the research community explore these advances, NOAA’s Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) will host a dedicated short course at AMS 2026, focused on hands-on training with community-developed AI modeling tools. This workshop is designed not only to teach participants how to use cutting-edge AI models, but also to equip them with tools and techniques needed to continue innovating long after the session concludes.
