Modernizing the R2O and O2R machine at the National Hurricane Center

The Hurricane and Ocean Testbed (HOT) was established in December 2021 to accelerate the transfer of promising products and services, focused on tropical weather and marine phenomena, into operational forecast centers. The HOT is physically based in the Dr. William Lapenta Laboratory at the National Hurricane Center (NHC), where operational and research stakeholders have engaged in several collaborative activities in the past two years. To begin building an efficient research to operations (R2O) and operations to research (O2R) pipeline, several foundational steps were taken to build the R2O/O2R “machine” in the HOT. Virtual cloud environments that emulate an operational environment were deployed, including both a data processing server and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) display software, and processes were established to improve the success rate of full transitions to operations. Leveraging cloud technologies allows for more direct interactions between researchers and operational forecasters. This talk will focus on the R2O/O2R pipeline architecture and the successful product transitions to date.