Matt Strahan’s encouragements and efforts to the international collaborations for mitigation of global aviation weather hazards

Dr. Jung-Hoon Kim (the first author) used to work at NOAA/Aviation Weather Center (AWC) at Kansas City, MO during 2015-2018 with Mr. Matt Strahan (the second author) who was a branch chief of International Operational Branch (IOB) in the NOAA/AWC. Mr. Matt Strahan was also a representative of US part of World Area Forecast Center (WAFC) Washington. Mr. Matt Strahan was a great man who always tries to encourage possible research ideas for facilitating the update and modernization of the World Area Forecast System (WAFS) from the two centers of the WAFC London and Washington. His support was a fundamental energy to upgrade new version of the WAFS in line with the Global Aeronautical Navigation Plan (GANP) of the WMO/ICAO, which eventually provide an invaluable information for safe and efficient air travel in the world. This presentation will describe more details of his efforts for the international collaborations of the en-route aviation weather hazard mitigations across the world. Some of his efforts ended up publishing two scientific papers in AMS journals such as Kim et al. (2016) in JAMC and Kim et al. (2018) and BAMS. Although Mr. Matt Strahan passed away, his sprit of the encouragements and supports to the international collaborations for the mitigation of global aviation weather hazards will never fade away. In this regard, this presentation will also introduce some of recent progresses of global climatology of upper-level turbulence revealed in the state-of-the-art reanalysis data and climate change scenario model, published in Lee J.-H. et al. (2023) and Kim S.-H. et al. (2023).

References

Kim, J.-H., R. D. Sharman, M. Strahan, J. W. Scheck, C. Bartholomew, J. C. H. Cheung, P. Buchanan, N. Gait, 2018: Improvements in Non-Convective Aviation Turbulence Prediction for the World Area Forecast System (WAFS), B. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 99, 2295-2311. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0117.1.

Kim, J.-H., W. N. Chan, B. Sridhar, R. D. Sharman, P. D. Williams, and M. Strahan, 2016: Impact of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Transatlantic Flight Routes and Clear-Air Turbulence. J. Appl. Meteorol. Clim., 55(3), 763-771. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0261.1.

Lee, J.-H., J.-H. Kim, R. D. Sharman, J. Kim, and S.-W. Son, 2023: Climatology of Clear-Air Turbulence in Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere in the Northern Hemisphere using ERA5 reanalysis data. J. Geophys. Res. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD037679.

Kim, S.-H., J.-H. Kim, H.-Y. Chun, and R. D. Sharman, 2023: Global Response of Upper-Level Aviation Turbulence from Various Sources to Climate Change. npj CLim. Atmos. SCi. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-023-00421-3.

Key Words: Matt Strahan, WAFS, WAFC, international collaboration, aviation weather hazards

Acknowledgment: This work was funded by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant KMI2022-00310.