The primary role of weather information in NextGen is to enable the identification of where and when aircraft can and cannot fly if they are to avoid any given weather impact. Weather information is tailored to user needs and flight-specific situations. In addition to standard flight planning and ATM decision-making, weather information supports forecasting of: 1) blockages impacting airports, 2) need for reconfiguration of airspace or airports, 3) maximum arrival flows, 4) airport surface movement, 5) communications outages due to solar activity, 6) disaster scenarios, 7) wake/vortex movement and dissipation, 8) airport noise and pollution footprints, and 9) atmospheric environmental impacts.

These roles and needs for weather information are facilitated by transitioning to a single authoritative source for NextGen weather information. To ensure consistency and continuity in the weather information supplied to NextGen decisions, government-provided weather information is collected, fused, managed as a single authoritative source, and distributed via Network Enabled Operations. The single authoritative source, or common operating picture, means, for example, that information for convection for a geographic area and time developed by different predictors are fused by expert system techniques into a single forecast that all requesting users receive. If no fused forecast is available, a designated domain authority will determine which of multiple sources will be adopted for use as the single authoritative source. This information is used in joint government/user NextGen decision making.

At the core of this capability is a virtual four dimensional data base formed by expert system fusion of various gridded products, model output, statistical systems, climate information, observations, and human forecaster input. The data base contains grids of such critical variables as winds, temperatures, convection, volcanic ash, icing, turbulence, clouds, and precipitation. These grids are available via network enabled operations for direct integration into automated systems or for generation of visual products.