A Decision Support System for Diagnosing and Nowcasting Oceanic Convection for Oceanic Aviation Use

Deep convection in remote, oceanic regions can create hazardous conditions for transoceanic aircraft due to the presence of turbulence, lightning and icing. Last year's Air France Flight 447 accident and the Continental Flight 128 turbulence incident illustrate the need for flight deck strategic planning tools that will advance aviation safety. The Oceanic Convection Diagnosis and Nowcasting decision support system is a potential component of such a tool and has been developed for pilots and dispatchers of transoceanic flights where aircraft fly at enroute altitudes. Satellite remote sensing is used in conjunction with global numerical weather prediction to identify deep convective clouds over remote, oceanic regions and to produce short-term nowcasts of their future location. These oceanic convection products are geared toward fulfillment of the Federal Aviation Administration's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) goal for a global convection product.

The Oceanic Convection Diagnosis and Nowcasting system identifies deep convection through a data fusion of three geostationary satellite methodologies over a regional domain. For the global domain, two of the component algorithms identify convection. The system nowcasts the future location of deep convection at 1-8 hours by merging storm vectors from an object-tracking methodology with the model wind field. The diagnosis algorithm has undergone extensive testing and validation using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) observatory. Likewise, the extrapolation methodology has been validated. The presentation will describe the decision support system, show recent results for the validation efforts and discuss potential products for use by pilots in the flight deck.