Community Advisory Committee for Water Prediction Terms of Reference

Purpose

The Community Advisory Committee for Water Prediction (CAC-WP) is established to conduct independent, routine, comprehensive reviews of the National Water Model (NWM), other modeling innovations, and related data and information services of the National Weather Service Office of Water Prediction (OWP), within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). The CAC-WP meets at least annually and produces a written report of its findings and recommendations.

Functions

The CAC-WP reviews and provides advice regarding:

  1. The National Water Model, including:
    1. Current and future elements of the National Water Model as described in a multi-year strategic science and services framework, as well as future adjustments to that framework
    2. In-situ and remotely-sensed observations for assimilation and validation;
    3. Physiographic data sets such as terrain data, stream network, land use land cover, soils data, reservoir characteristics, and other relevant data sets
    4. Hydrometeorological forcings
    5. Improved representation of physical processes
    6. Accounting for anthropogenic processes
    7. The establishment of a community developmental testbed and associated governance
    8. National Water Model performance metrics to assess overall model performance and objectively evaluate potential model upgrades
    9. Involvement of the National Weather Service River Forecast Centers (RFC), Weather Forecasting Offices (WFOs) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in using, validating and improving the NWM
    10. Requirements for high performance computational resources and associated implementation strategies to optimally use available computing resources
    11. Integration into a broader unified Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC)
  2. The evolution of the OWP water resources data services
  3. Integrating the broad spectrum and large volume of water resources and related geospatial information for new product development, and enhanced impact-based decision-support services (IDSS)