Convective weather forecasts beyond two hours are typically probabilistic. They define geographic regions and forecast percent coverage and percent probability of occurrence within the region. The Collaborative Convective Forecast Product (CCFP), which is currently used for Traffic Flow Management (TFM), uses this format to provide forecasts of convective weather up to 6 hours into the future. MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) is investigating whether probabilistic forecasts can be used in TFM decision support concepts to help plan for weather disruptions. CAASD has already developed decision support concepts for using deterministic forecasts that have a one or two hour time horizon, but decisions beyond two hours will have to rely on probabilistic forecasts. One possibility is to develop techniques to translate probabilistic forecasts into capacity reduced areas, which indicate that a region will be able to accommodate fewer flights in the future than is normally possible. This could then be used to help determine how many flight plans will have to be modified to reduce the demand in each capacity reduced area, and to recommend candidate flight plan modifications. The inaccuracies of weather forecasts as well as the inaccuracies in predicted aircraft traffic in this 2-6 hour forecast period will have to be considered in making these determinations. This paper is a discussion of the developing concepts for TFM decision support using probabilistic convective forecasts.

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