R2O | Research to Operations

Underlying transitions from research to operations are typically some critical sources of raw data or observations that can further an operational objective or priority when provided to practitioners and applied to the mission. In early stages, there is often at least some degree of research involvement in either setting the specifications of the instruments that will take new observations, or establishing concepts and performance specifications for potential derived research byproducts from those observations. Most successful iterations of the R2O cycle consume a few years at the very most. What happens, then, when there are observing system or new dataset procurements that take a decade or longer? Consider this case study. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R) launched in November 2016 after years of planning and preparation. As a weather satellite, GOES-R will be able to provide operational meteorologists with imagery of atmospheric patterns and cl