  This paper reviews the research activities that were carried out under the
auspices of the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) to advance research
in wind wave modeling and transfer maturing technologies into operational
community models. Primary focus of research activities that were funded under
this program was to improve the source terms associated with deep water wind
waves with a secondary focus on shallow water processes. While the focus has
been on developing capabilities for stochastic phase averaged models, some of
the research work reported here also touches on phase resolved models as well
as updates that are needed to the classical stochastic equations to be
applicable in shallow water conditions. The primary focus is on the development
of new source terms to account for wave generation, dissipation and nonlinear
wave-wave interactions. A direct result of this program has been the
development of new physics packages in operational wave models that have
improved forecast skill from 30 to 50 percent. Since this is an overview paper
summarizing all the activities that were undertaken under this program, only
the major results are presented here. The readers are directed to other
publications for more details. The paper ends with a discussion of the
remaining major challenges in wind wave modeling, from the larger open ocean
scales to the smaller coastal domains.
