Status Update on the NOAA's Joint Technology Transfer Initiative Research to Operations Program

In FY2016, 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 $10M and $20M in the subsequent years in support of the JTTI. 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 weather research from the American Weather Enterprise into the NWS operations.

Within OAR, the Office of Weather and Air Quality (OWAQ) is responsible for managing this JTTI program and provide funding opportunities to transition latest weather technologies into the NWS operations. Promising transition projects are selected only through competition. OWAQ sought proposals from the broader American Weather Enterprise to select promising technologies that can potentially transition to the NWS operations. To date, OWAQ ran three external competitions for the broader American Weather Enterprise and one internal competition for the NOAA scientists. Proposals were sought in the following main areas: advancing data assimilation of new observations and data assimilation techniques for convective-scale weather prediction; improving water prediction capabilities through enhancements to the National Water Model; improving daily to subseasonal scale prediction of Arctic sea ice; communicating forecast uncertainty; techniques for global and regional-scale predictions out to subseasonal time scale; and use of snowpack and soil moisture remote sensing data to improve the National Water Model and contribute to NOAA’s National Water Center.

This paper presents status update of the JTTI program including current projects, transitions to NWS operations, and future funding opportunities.