THE WEATHER RESEARCH AND FORECAST MODEL: SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE AND PERFORMANCE

The first non-beta release of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) modeling system in May, 2004 represented a key milestone in the effort to design and implement a fully-functioning, next-generation modeling system for the atmospheric research and operational NWP user communities. With efficiency, portability, maintainability, and extensibility as bedrock requirements, the WRF software framework has allowed incremental and reasonably rapid development while maintaining overall consistency and adherence to the architecture and its interfaces. The WRF 2.0 release supports the full-range of functionality envisioned for the model including efficient scalable performance on a range of high-performance computing platforms, multiple dynamic cores and physics options, low-overhead two-way interactive nesting, moving nests, model coupling, and interoperability with other common model infrastructure efforts such as ESMF.