Enhancing digital services for aviation

In support of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and to meet the evolving needs of the General Aviation community, several National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Offices (WFO) are producing digital forecasts of ceiling, visibility, and probability of thunder, from which Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (TAF) are generated. These enhanced digital aviation services will be expanded to more WFOs over the next few years, to produce a national mosaic of aviation forecast elements. In addition, NOAA's Aviation Weather Center (AWC) can use these digital forecasts to generate Area Forecasts and other aviation products. This effort will result in a seamless and consistent forecast suite from the local TAF to the national en-route aviation weather products. The weather paradigm for Federal Aviation Administration's NextGen revolves around the concept of a 4-D Weather Data Cube, of which a critical component is the Single Authoritative Source, or SAS. The SAS is defined as the consistent, common weather information Air Traffic Management (ATM) decision-makers will use for integration into the decision support tools of the NextGen era. NOAA's NWS has accepted the responsibility to develop and populate the 4-D Weather Data Cube with the necessary gridded aviation weather elements. The digital aviation services as described above are consistent with the NextGen weather vision and will be an important step to populate the 4-D Weather Data Cube in the near future.