A CLR Case for METAR Ceiling and Visibility Climatology

Aviation routine weather reports (METARs) are a valuable source of truth for use in ceiling and visibility verification problems. There is a lack of METAR-derived climatology for ceiling and visibility. Such a climatology can provide a reference forecast to evaluate the skill and accuracy of forecast and observation systems. We have constructed Parquet datasets that consist of 10 years of METAR data from over 2500 stations across CONUS and Alaska with distributions for each station on the duration of time spent in ceiling and visibility flight categories. Additionally, we have cataloged individual events of degraded flight conditions for each station that provide additional insights into onset, cessation, and frequency of such events. This data has been and continues to be used for verification of aviation weather products. This presentation will demonstrate the use cases of our dataset through examples of ceiling and visibility trends and case studies.