Bridging the “Valley of Death” and Accelerating the Transition of Research to Operations—A Common Set of Standards, Benchmarks, Test and Evaluation Procedures and Metrics for the Land Surface Modeling Community

Agency-unique technical standards and processes have been known to be impediments to interagency scientific collaboration. Drawing on the best practices and lessons learned from past space and earth science missions, the representatives and members of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Working Group (WG) 14 on Land Surface Modeling have been involved in a concerted effort to develop a common set of processes and procedures for the LSM community-at-large. Adoption and implementation of the WG's integrated, interdisciplinary approach to evaluating next-generation hydro/land surface modeling of the water cycle have enabled agencies to accelerate the transition of research to operations across the Federal enterprise thereby turning a potential impediment into a characteristic strength for successful interagency collaboration. A summary of the WG's approach will be presented.