UFS Weather Model

The UFS Weather Model (WM) is a prognostic model that can be used for short- and medium-range research and operational forecasts. It can be run as an atmosphere-only model or as an atmospheric model coupled with one or more additional components, such as a wave or ocean model.

The UFS WM is constantly evolving, and new features are added at a rapid pace. Users can find those features in the develop branch, but documentation may be behind the latest updates. The UFS WM is tagged frequently for public and operational releases. The ufs-srw-v3.0.0 tag of the WM is the most recent public release of the UFS WM, which was released as part of the UFS Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application v3.0.0. This tag represents a snapshot of a continuously evolving system undergoing open development. Key architectural elements of the UFS Weather Model include:

• The Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3) dynamical core – the computational part of the atmospheric model that solves the equations of fluid motion.
• The Flexible Modeling System (FMS) – a software framework for supporting the efficient development, construction, execution, and scientific interpretation of atmospheric, oceanic, and climate system models. It is used for functions such as parallelization. 
• The Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) – a framework and library of physics schemes that support interoperable atmospheric physics (i.e., numerical methods approximating the effects of small-scale processes such as clouds, turbulence, radiation, and their interactions). 
• Stochastic Physics schemes – apply randomized perturbations to the physical tendencies, or physical parameters, of a model in order to compensate for model uncertainty. 

The Weather Model is currently used in NOAA’s operational Global Forecast System (GFS). Additionally, the UFS Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application uses the Weather Model in its v3.0.0 public release (April 2025).