Joint Technology Transfer Initiative: Building the Bridge to Transition Community-based Weather Research to the NWS Operations

In FY2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research’s (OAR) appropriation included an increase of $6M to create a new program called the Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (JTTI). OAR received increased funding in the subsequent years in support of this program. OAR carried out this program in coordination with the National Weather Service (NWS), and in cooperation with the American weather enterprise. JTTI’s main mission is to transition promising matured weather research from the American Weather Enterprise to the NWS operations.

Within OAR, the Weather Program Office (WPO) is responsible for managing the JTTI program. Promising transition projects are selected through external competitions (Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) through Grants.Gov) for non-NOAA scientists and internal competitions for NOAA scientists. More than half of JTTI funded R2O projects support advancement of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), through NOFOs, internal competitions and the NWS/Office of Science and Integration led UFS_R2O project. In addition, FY23 appropriations directed the JTTI to support faster adoption of operationalizable weather model upgrades. JTTI synergistically works with Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) in advancing the UFS. In this paper, we present how JTTI built the bridge to connect the weather research community to the operational community, interdisciplinarity of JTTI projects and how JTTI integrates NOFO R2O projects with the UFS_R2O for faster operational adoption.