Regional and Subregional Initiatives for Improved Weather Service Delivery to Aviation

EUMETNET is a grouping of 36 European National Meteorological Services that provides a framework to organise cooperative programmes between its members in meteorology and related fields. These activities include observing systems, data processing, basic forecasting products, research, development and training. EUMETNET has established an Aviation Support Programme Some, whose key tasks are:

• Representing the aviation MET community at various European institutions, industry bodies, and stakeholder and technical groups, undertaking lobbying and reporting developments to our members
• Coordinating R&D and deployment activities such as SESAR
• Identifying new opportunities for collaborative research and service provision for all our Members
• Fostering collaborative approach between Members for post-deployment service provision and identifying risks and issues that may require change management and mitigation

To assist in implementing the tasks of the Aviation Support Programme, EUMETNET employs a full-time Aviation Coordinator and a half-time Aviation Expert who are nominated from the member institutions. Furthermore, EUMETNET has established a technical working group AVIMET, which composes the heads of aviation weather services and aims to coordinate the emerging actions in the European domain. Recently EUMETNET has established an Aviation Advisory Committee (AVAC) with the executive directors of aviation weather services to develop a strategy and implementation plan for future cooperation in Europe.

Some key figure about European MET service provision include

• In 67% of the 36 EUMETNET member countries the NMHS organisation provides the MWO function, in 25% this is the ATS organization
• In only 19% of members all MWO, AMO and AMS functions are being provided by the NMHS organization
• There are many MET ANSPs with varying responsibilities and differing cost structures
• ECMWF (intergovernmental organisation), DWD, Météo-France and UK Met Office run global models, some other national MET services run limited area models

EUMETNET has been effective in setting up project structures supporting various Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) initiatives addressing user needs for information services and currently a number of members are actively deploying those services.

Sub-regional Service Delivery – Northern Europe Aviation Meteorology Consortium (NAMCON)

NAMCON is a cooperation between the National Meteorological Services of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway and Sweden – emerged from an increasing pressure on the NMSs as designated MET service providers to air navigation to at the same time increase efficiency, harmonise production, innovate and develop new services for emerging user applications. The task is for one small – to medium-sized NMS a great challenge, and a grouping of seven NMSs can pool together the resources and expertise to meet these challenges much better.

The long history of cooperation in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), weather radar and training combined with the strong organisational will to create the NAMCON consortium has been and remains the backbone of the cooperation. The main goal of the consortium is to reduce the cost of designated aviation weather services in line with the Single European Sky Reference Period targets and beyond. The main tool to achieve this is to join the production of services and products and reduce overlap. Examples of such initiatives are the cross-border TAF production over Southern Sweden by the Danish Meteorological Institute and the joint production of the Nordic Significant Weather Chart (NSWC) by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) and Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).

NAMCON aims to set the stage for regional service delivery of aviation weather services in Northern Europe by harmonising production and creating joint initiatives. Through incremental and systematic development and cooperation, the challenges of future service delivery can be met while ensuring the continuity of most operations. NAMCON has been able to achieve the following major results:

1. Joint Significant Weather Chart production between FMI (FIN) & SMHI (SWE) – N(ord)SWC using new SWIM-compliant SWC tool
2. Joint aviation weather briefing portal www.northavimet.com
3. Joint low-level forecast (LLF) production between SMHI & DMI (DEN) using a new interactive tool
4. SIGMET coordination procedure between all seven countries
5. Joint strategy for future aviation weather service provision
6. TAF Guidelines developed and implemented
7. International recognition from WMO, ICAO and EU
8. SESAR Deployment project “Sub-regional SWIM MET deployment to support NEFRA” funding next generation forecast tools 2016-2018

Together these two cooperation mechanisms represent regional and sub-regional cross-border projects that aim to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of MET services for users. Feedback from National Supervisory Authorities has been very positive and improvements in the quality of e.g. SIGMET warnings and Low-Level Forecasts have been substantial. This is achieved in Northern Europe through developing and implementing joint guidance for TAF and SIGMET and developing and implementing a joint production system and guidance for low-level forecasts.