 WRF features two dynamical (computational) cores (or "solvers"), a data assimilation system, and a software architecture allowing for parallel computation and system extensibility.The model serves a wide range of meteorological applications across scales ranging from meters to thousands of kilometers.The effort to develop WRF began in the latter part of the 1990s and was a collaborative partnership principally among the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (represented by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the (then) Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL)), the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA), the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the University of Oklahoma (OU), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).