The GFS and its "place in the world"

[NJHurricane]

Sorry if this has been covered before in this subforum as I don't venture out of the regionals as much as I should....but to what extent/how is the GFS used by meteorologists in the rest of the world?  I know we all hang on to see every panel of the Euro before we form a full opinion of a storm threat, but is the GFS considered an essential tool by forecasters in Europe and Asia?  What weight do they give it and what biases does it have in other regions of the world?  Thanks in advance especially for any pro mets from overseas or those with experience forecasting for other parts of the world.

 

Jon in Jersey

[am19psu]

The Aussies I know appear to use Euro then GFS then UKMet.

[Ed Lizard]

Heresay evidence, back when Bastardi was at AccuWeather, he claimed the South American desk had far fewer issues with the GFS, he always though less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere allowed GFS to compete better with Euro.

 

 

BTW, our NCEP makes almost everything available for free w/i an hour of the end of a run, if one looks at the right place, .gov or .edu sites.  Canadians make some available, UK Met less, and the Europeans are pretty tight.  AccuWx PPV has six hour expanded Euro graphics, but they charge for them, and no doubt so does the ECMWF.

 

So, too bad GFS busts on a big snow storm (but was closer with a Gulf TC last Summer than Euro), but free graphics, that is appreciated.

[isohume]

We used the GFS and WRF almost exclusively for the Middle East when I was stationed at Shaw AFB with the 28th OWS - Air Force Weather. I know the 21st OWS, which covers Europe and North Africa, use the same model packages. The GFS performs well operationally and there are always pros and cons to giving a certain model more weight than another. It depends on the overall fcst process and known biases, but I've seen the op ECMWF be a drastic outlier as much as the GFS...it's ebenflow.