The Impact of AMDAR Reporting over East China on Short-Term High-Resolution Regional NWP Application

As one of the high spatiotemporal datasets, Aircraft Meteorological DAta Relay (AMDAR) weather reports provide great volume of upper air observations in support of meteorological applications. AMDAR soundings have been found to help meteorologist determine stability of atmosphere with available temperature, moisture, and wind data at varying altitudes and improve forecast skill through the advance data assimilation.

Since 2004, the Chinese AMDAR program started to share worldwide via the Global Telecommunication System (GTS). However, few studies evaluate the impact of Chinese AMDAR data on shorter-term high resolution regional aviation weather forecast in China region due to the lack of capability of AMDAR data processing and quality control and the absence of an operational shorter-term regional aviation weather forecast platform.

Aiming at improving strategic air traffic management (ATM) decision-making with more accurate 2 to 12 hours’ weather forecasting, the East China Air Traffic Management Bureau (EC ATMB) Shanghai collaborated with I. M. Systems Group Inc., (IMSG) and implemented high resolution Regional Rapid-Refresh (eIAWS-R3R) system, which has been in operational mode since May 2017. The system uses the Non-hydrostatic Multiscale Model on the B-grid (NMMB) as its core model, and assimilates observations hourly through Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) platform, which make it possible to evaluate the value of Chinese AMDAR data on shorter-term NWP forecast. The estimation of the AMDAR data quality as well as evaluation on its impact on eIAWS-R3R forecast skills are conducted and the preliminary results will be presented.