Representatives of national modeling centers will present their organization's current progress in modeling development as well a vision for the future.

A forum featuring panelists with expertise in research, operations, and practice discussing transitions and interactions among those realms.

Ron Przybylinski, the former Science and Operations Officer (SOO) of the National Weather Service Forecast Office in St. Louis, Missouri, left us the legacy of his unending motivation to interconnect weather operations and research in strong and enduring ways. Ron was a master in the transition zone, or nexus, of operations and research. Research interactions with Ron led to large field projects that provided the great benefit both to operations and the general knowledge. Ron Przybylinski inspired the idea of the RON Meetups, which have taken place at the National Weather Association (NWA) Annual Meetings since 2015 and American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meetings since 2018.

This session will provide the opportunity for an interactive "meetup" between research and operational meteorologists. The groups will rotate through a number of stations in speed-mentoring fashion and discuss ideas and themes that could benefit forecast and warning operations. The goal is simple: to build and develop new relationships in the nexus!  This year, the meetup will be followed by an additional discussion including R2O/O2R success stories and expert-provided information on how to succeed in O2R/R2O.

Because seating is limited, additional registration (at no cost) is required at the following link: https://forms.gle/fK88UpMmvUsBDQMZA.

The session is scheduled to be a 90-minute panel discussion moderated by the co-chairs of the 30th WAF/26th NWP conferences.  A 5-minute introduction from each panelist will start the session, with each panelist discussing what they see as Future Challenges in Weather Analysis and Forecasting and how their work addresses said challenges.  The remainder of the session (about 60 minutes) will be an open-floor discussion, where audience members will be encouraged to ask questions to the panelists about Future Challenges in Weather Analysis and Forecasting.  The discussion will be guided by the moderator(s) as needed.  

This will be a joint session between the 8th Symposium on Building a Weather-ready Nation (8WRN), 10th Conference on Transition of Research to Operations (10R2O), and 30th Conference on Weather Analysis and Forecasting (30WAF).  We welcome abstracts from emergency managers, social scientists, operational forecasters, researchers with R2O products, and others at the R2O nexus, to discuss the challenges they face in communication and decision support.