Our Strategic Vision
The fundamental mission of the NCEP/NWS Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), in close collaboration with our partners and stakeholders, is to maintain, enhance and transition-to-operations advanced numerical guidance systems for the Nation's weather/water/climate enterprise and the global community for the protection of life/property and the enhancement of the economy. To that end, and reflecting our vision to be one of the world's best and most trusted providers of numerical guidance, EMC is committed to a multi-year plan to use the NOAA Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) as to foundation upon which to build a Unified Forecast System for the future NCEP Production Suite. The envisioned end state would be a simplified production suite under this unified framework using a single dynamic core for all temporal and spatial model scales which is fully coupled and ensemble-based. By its active participation in the NGGPS Strategic Implementation Plan Working Groups, EMC is fully engaged with the nation's weather/water/climate community in all aspects of the project, from research/development to testing and validation.
A high-level overview of EMC's vision and how it adheres to the overarching NOAA Unified Modeling framework is outlined in the EMC Director's presentation at the 2017 NCEP Production Suite Review on December 4, 2017. Short-term activities are outlined in the 2019-2021 UFS/NGGPS Implementation Plan, which describes the major EMC and community development and implementation projects for this time frame.
LEADERSHIP
Dr. Brian Gross, Director of the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC)
Dr. Brian Gross was named the new Director of the Environmental Modeling Center, effective October 14, 2018. Dr. Gross served in the role of Acting EMC Director from November 2017 to July 2018. He will be taking on this position permanently as EMC evolves to developing a community-based Unified Forecast System, with the initial focus on the upgrade of the GFS model with the FV dynamic core in the months ahead, while working collaboratively to modernize model applications spanning local to global domains. This is no small feat, as Numerical Weather Prediction is fundamental to forecasts, and essential to building a Weather-Ready Nation that is ready, responsive, and resilient to increasing vulnerabilities from extreme weather, water, and climate events.
Before joining EMC, Dr. Gross was the Deputy Director of NOAA's High Performance Computing and Communications office in NOAA's Office of the Chief Information Officer. Prior to that, Dr. Gross was the Deputy Director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory for 13 years. He has also served as head of GFDL's software development group and as a research scientist there, modeling weather and climate with an emphasis on storm tracks.
Brian earned his doctorate in astrophysical, planetary, and atmospheric science from the University of Colorado and was a Research Associate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, then a visiting scientist in Princeton University's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. He received his undergraduate B.S. from the University of Maryland in physics and astronomy.