89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Terminal Aerodrome Forecast-based Tactical Decision Aid
Hall 5 (Phoenix Convention Center)
Eric Avila, NOAA/NWS, Houston, TX
Poster PDF (593.8 kB)
The Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (“TAF”) product is used by members of the aviation community to make critical decisions regarding the National Air Space. I have developed a web-based Tactical Decision Aid (“TDA”) that transforms the TAF into a table format that allows the user to easily view for any specified airport the most recent observed conditions along with the forecast conditions for the next 12 hours. The TDA includes color coding to indicate when the observed and/or forecast conditions meet or exceed the threshold for any flight restrictions including ceilings, visibility, precipitation, wind, and low-level wind shear. Airport runway cross wind information is also displayed for both observed and forecast winds. The output from the TDA is refreshed every five minutes to ensure the most recent observation and any TAF amendments or updates are displayed. An interface is provided that allows the user to customize the threshold values of ceiling, visibility and wind speed. In this presentation I will demonstrate the use and applications of this TDA.

Supplementary URL: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/zhu/www/tda.php