Present and Future Scientific Enhancements to the World Area Forecast System (WAFS).

The provision of accurate/detailed meteorological information is essential for the safe and efficient management of airline and airport operations. Supporting much of this is the World Area Forecast System (WAFS), provided by the London and Washington centres. This capability is currently undergoing significant upgrades that have improved prediction of en-route hazards with further enhancements under development. The Met Office (WAFC London) has worked over many years on these improvements with close collaboration with our WAFC Washington colleagues.

The presentation will cover three key areas of improvement for the WAFS namely:

1. Completed upgrades resulting in significantly higher-resolution (0.25 degree) turbulence (which comprises of clear air turbulence or CAT and orographically induced turbulence), cumulonimbus cloud (Cb), and in-flight icing forecasts. This includes provision of new deterministic severity-based forecasts of turbulence and icing (replacing the previously used ‘potential’ metrics). In addition, these datasets are being made available at many more vertical levels and timesteps.
2. The Significant Weather (SIGWX) Objects project will implement the capability to automatically create hazard area data for the creation of WAFS Significant Weather (SIGWX) charts without human intervention. This project is scheduled for initial implementation in July 2024. The automation of this process will allow for an increase in the number of available forecast time steps.
3. Ultimately (2027) there will be probabilistic WAFS hazard datasets for turbulence, Cb, and inflight icing. This presentation will cover work to understand what that will look like and the scientific and technical challenges associated with their generation.