Pass variable filters to another view in panels

I am currently making a panels-page to let people search free tagging terms on my site. I will have 4 panes. the layout will be:

Row 1: 100%
Row 2: 50, 50
Row 3: 100

The top pane will have the search functions with exposed filters to search for a tag. It will ideally also have an A B C D E... set of links to show all tags that start with the respective letter. The actual search function would be like a standard search bar. Where the results would co into the row 2, column 1 pane. Here it will show also all the tags that start with the letter L if the user clicks the "L" link in the first pane. The pane hopefully will only be so big and if there is a lot of search results it will show a scroll bar. I was thinking of using a mini-panel?

When a free tag in row 2, column 1 is clicked the row 2, column 2 will show a list of all nodes that use that term. A node title will link to that node as normal but will also have a [preview] link that when clicked shows the teaser in node form in the row 3 pane. Im not too worried about theming it all yet since when i am done with the site i will be starting up my own theme from scratch (hopefully).

So how can i pass a variable from one view to another? I looked in the forums and Google and wasn't able to find anything i was able to use. But I am still looking. Also if possible i would like only a pane to refresh if it needs to. I want to try and avoid having to reload the entire page if necessary. But if I have to work on that separately then that's fine.

So andy ideas on how I can accomplish this? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks