Pushing towards technical readiness for Aviation Weather Center product production within AWIPS-2

Since the start of the reinvigorated effort to transition the National Centers for Environmental Prediction to the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System II (AWIPS-2) system back in 2019, the AWC, in partnership with the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) Program Office (APO), continues its push towards operational readiness. This effort has recently become a national milestone with NCEP and the National Weather Service and has been fueled by the expectation of transitioning the AWIPS systems to the cloud framework prior to 2030.

At this time, the goal of the national transition milestone remains on porting current functionality in the National Centers’ version of AWIPS (N-AWIPS) into AWIPS-2 to assure readiness for the shift to the cloud framework. To that end, the AWC continues to make strides towards that goal, including reaching technical readiness for three desks and conducting operational readiness testing on two of those, as well as continuing to work with APO to build in required functionality for three additional desks. In addition, work is ongoing to develop requirements for the AWC’s contingent of National Aviation Meteorologist (NAM) forecasters at the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center (ATC) in Warrenton, VA, and -as the first to do so at the AWC- establish those requirements in the AWIPS cloud framework. An update of AWC’s AWIPS-2 transition progress and subsequent challenges and successes will be presented along with a view of the future in the plans to shift the ATC onto the cloud framework.