W2W (Waves to Weather) is a Collaborative Research Center delivering the underpinning science needed to identify the limits of predictability in different weather situations so as to pave the way towards a new generation of weather forecasting systems. See http://w2w.meteo.physik.uni-muenchen.de/. The research programme is listed under the headings of Upscale Error Growth, Cloud-Scale Uncertainties and Predictability of local Weather. The second 4-year phase has started July 2019. Results of the project are available in a QJRMS and an AMS journal special collection and on the W2W website (https://www.wavestoweather.de/).

WEXICOM (Weather warnings: from EXtreme event Information to COMunication and action) is an interdisciplinary collaborative research project aimed at facilitating transparent and effective communication of risks and uncertainties for individual user groups. See http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/met/wexicom/index.html.

Developed pre-operational impact forecasts in partnership with the fire brigade; Collecting citizen science measurements as part of a field experiment, to be used in forecast verification. (Martin Goeber, DWD).

 Associated with Waves to Weather, a new PhD project has started to investigate the impact of the new Aeolus space-born Doppler lidar on tropical waves and precipitation. Through its measurements of winds in cloud free regions Aeolus is closing an important gap in the global observing system and thus it is expected to substantially improve analysis fields and subsequently predictions of synoptic- to planetary-scale wave phenomena in the Tropics. The work will be conducted in close collaboration with the German Weather Service (DWD) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which both are currently running data impact experiments with the new data.

In addition, Waves to Weather scientists are going to participate in an international field campaign on the Cape Verde islands in summer 2020, called ASKOS (http://askos.space.noa.gr). This project is built around planned calibration/validation aircraft measurements conducted during the same period. Cape Verde during boreal summer is ideal for a study of tropical wave phenomena. The midlevel African easterly jet allows for the formation of synoptic-scale African easterly waves (AEWs) that typically reach their maximum intensity close to the coast of West Africa. AEWs interact with convection and its mesoscale organization through modifications in humidity, temperature and vertical wind shear, and often serve as initial disturbances for tropical cyclogenesis. In addition, the tropical atmosphere sustains different types of planetary waves that frequently interact with the monsoon and AEWs. To support our research in this area, we plan frequent radiosonde ascents from Cape Verde to complement the measurements from space and aircraft.