Vijay Tallapragada presented a status update on HWRF T&E for the 2009 implementation. The finalized changes to the HWRF for the 2009 pre-implementation testing include: initialization-related source code edits, gravity wave drag parameterization, a bug fix for radiative fluxes in the nested domain, land-surface temperature bug fix in the nested domain, HWRFPOST will include additional variables, faster copygb, a bug fix in the read/write auxiliary files, a tpcpost script that will exclude the generation of swaths where the storm dies within the first 6 hours, and an inclusion of POM output in the archives. Vijay also mentioned a unification of HWRF source code so it may be used by all developers. The unified code has features such as uniform code for both HYCOM and POM, inclusion of gravity wave drag parameterization, sea spray parameterization (currently turned off), land-surface temperature bug fix, inner domain short wave radiation bug fix, and a restart/high resolution option (currently turned off). The framework for the 3-way coupling of HWRF-HYCOM-WaveWatchIII has also been added to the scripts for use in the future. As requested by NCO, more error checks and alerts were included in the scripting to aid in diagnostics. Vijay anticipated that the system will be ready for testing by January 22. Testing will be performed on 2008 Atlantic and East Pacific storms using the new GFS/GSI Q1FY09 runs. It is also expected that the transition to P6 will be completed by the end of January for the HWRF, so testing can begin on P6.

Vijay mentioned that the HWRF might fail if it could not couple to POM or HYCOM properly. The restart option would be helpful in this case, so turning that option on in the model was mentioned. While the restart files could take up a lot of disk space, only saving the restart files from the most recent runs before writing over them in subsequent cycles would solve that problem.

Steve Lord brought up the topic of using regridding instead of relocation in the HWRF. Regridding would involve moving the whole grid so the hurricane was in the correct place. Since grid stretching might occur, configuring the grid so the stretched areas are further from the storm would be necessary. More discussion on this topic will follow.