Advanced Terminal Weather Products Demonstration in New York

A prototype Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) has been used to demonstrate advanced terminal weather products in New York airspace. These products are displayed to air traffic controllers, supervisors, traffic flow management specialists and airline operations personnel.

A new graphical terminal winds display indicates when strong vertical wind shear is occurring, and whether conditions have changed in the recent past. A new algorithm, path-based shear detection (PSD), computes headwind/tailwind along the path of arrival corridors into the New York airports, and indicates where along the arrival path significant gains or losses will be experienced. The Route Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) is an early example of weather/air traffic management (ATM) integration that combines convective weather and echo top forecasts with departure routes to give the route status (clear, impacted, blocked) as a function of departure time for key corridors out of New York. The Convective Weather Forecast (CWF) has been updated to include growth/decay trends, storm classification, and other advanced features. Users will have the option of seeing either a summer or winter version of the forecast. A new ceiling and visibility prediction capability scheduled for operational testing in the fall of 2004 will also be discussed. The combination of the winter weather forecasts and RAPT is expected to provide a delay reduction benefit in excess of $10,000,000 annually.