The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. It can be configured into multiple applications, which span local to global domains and predictive time scales from sub-hourly analyses to seasonal predictions. The UFS is already being used for a wide range of research and operational prediction applications. In early 2020, the National Weather Service and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research teamed up to sponsor a project specifically targeting research to address critically important operational prediction issues and bring that research to a pre-implementation level of readiness in anticipation of transition to operations. This presentation will describe this UFS R2O Project, which got underway on 1 July 2020.
