Joint Numerical Weather Prediction

The Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit (JNWPU) was the first operational numerical-forecasting center in the United States, organized on 1 July 1954 and jointly staffed and funded by the U.S. Weather Bureau, the Air Force, and the Navy. Led by George Cressman and running on an IBM 701, it issued routine computer forecasts twice daily from 1955, applying the barotropic and later baroclinic models that grew out of the Princeton work of Charney and von Neumann. In January 1958 the JNWPU merged with the National Weather Analysis Center to form the National Meteorological Center, the direct predecessor of today’s NCEP.