Development of LAMP Cloud Base Guidance

The Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) provides skillful forecast guidance for multiple weather elements important to the aviation community through the Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP). This includes guidance such as ceiling height and opaque sky cover. Further, some members of the aviation community, including the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Aviation Weather Center (AWC), also require cloud base, or lowest cloud height, guidance to make critical decisions. Recent improvements to mesoscale models, such as the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model, provide basic cloud base guidance to support these decisions. Mesoscale models can be statistically post-processed by applying LAMP techniques to integrate recent surface observations with GFS MOS predictors to improve near-term guidance.

This presentation will discuss the initial development of LAMP cloud base guidance using the MOS technique (linear regression) with predictors similar to LAMP ceiling height guidance and provide some preliminary results. It will also discuss the development of a statistically post-processed cloud base forecast using a blend of the LAMP and the HRRR, also known as the LAMP/HRRR Meld, and present early findings. This developmental work is the first step to provide operational LAMP cloud base guidance to the aviation community. In addition, this guidance is expected to be integrated into the NWS National Blend of Models (NBM) to provide NWS forecasters with a skillful and consistent starting point for Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) creation and to support the NWS’s digital aviation services.