Evaluating the Use of Hazard Services Aviation in Communicating Hazardous Weather for En Route Flight Operations

The National Weather Service’s next generation hazard product generation software, Hazard Services, will include functionality to produce statements alerting of hazardous en route weather conditions such as turbulence, icing, volcanic ash, and convection for use by the general and commercial aviation communities. The main development and testing of Hazard Services Aviation (hereafter, HS Aviation) has been a collaborative effort between NOAA’s Global Systems Lab and NOAA/NWS Alaska Aviation Weather Unit/Anchorage Volcanic Ash Advisory Center, Aviation Weather Center and Aviation Weather Testbed, Honolulu Forecast Office, and the Arctic Testbed and Proving Ground (ATPG). The ATPG hosted a Forecaster Acceptance Test for HS Aviation in November 2023, and was the second iteration of focused testing of HS Aviation. The goals of the evaluation were to 1) test improved or new functionality in HS Aviation when alerting for hazardous en route weather over the majority of the US airspace, and 2) to test the application’s performance in a simulated operational forecast environment, which hadn’t been done before. Face to face interactions between the forecasters who participated in the evaluation and the developers of HS Aviation were invaluable in assessing the current state of the software as well as identifying requirements for future development to synchronize the product generation process at each aviation forecast office. This presentation will describe the evaluation procedures, challenges, and key findings from the participants and developers.