International research collaboration in high-impact weather prediction

The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) is an international research and development program conducted under the auspice of the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The THORPEX town hall meeting, which was part of the 2013 AMS Annual Meeting, was organized by the U.S. THORPEX Science Steering Committee to provide input into an international planning workshop conducted in Karlsruhe, Germany, during 18-19 March 2013 to further discuss the proposed project and initiate the development of a project plan. Speakers at the town hall meeting pointed out that several recent U.S. government agency initiatives are highly relevant to the proposed high-impact weather project as well as the Polar Prediction Project (PPP) and Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) projects. Other speakers promoted the use of operational models in academic research where appropriate in order to streamline the research to the operations transition process.