The Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) was a

meteorological Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not ...

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

laboratory in the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

(NOAA)/

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). OAR is also referred to as NOAA Research. NOAA Research is the research and development arm of NOAA and is the driving force beh ...

(OAR). In October 2005, it was merged with five other NOAA labs to form the

Earth System Research Laboratory The Earth System Research Laboratories (ESRL) is an alliance of four NOAA scientific labs, all located in the David Skaggs Research Center on the Department of Commerce campus in Boulder, Colorado. Organized under NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and ...

. FSL conducted applied meteorological research and development to improve and create short-term warning and

weather forecast Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th centu ...

systems, models, and observing technology.

Supercomputing A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

and other leading-edge technology are used in these applications. FSL then transferred these new scientific and technological advances to its clients which include NOAA's

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

, the commercial and

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

communities, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

, many foreign weather forecasting services, and various private interests.

References

External links

Forecast Systems Laboratory
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research {{US-gov-stub