International Collaboration to Improve Meteorological Services for Air Traffic Management

Increasing air traffic around the world is straining terminal and en route capacity in several regions, and existence of adverse weather further exacerbates the problem of congested airspace. In addition, efforts in Asia, Europe and North America to streamline Air Traffic Management (ATM) to permit greater capacity and efficiency demand improved meteorological services, specifically those geared toward ATM decision makers. It is apparent that legacy products required by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annex 3, such as the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF), provide insufficient information for future ATM models. In particular, the “hand-off” or approach control areas between the en route and terminal sectors, including the approach and departure corner points and fixes, are not currently covered under regulated ICAO products.

To address modern requirements for ATM-specific weather services, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission on Aeronautical Meteorology (CAeM) chartered an Expert Team (ET) to define gaps between information provided by legacy products and information required by current and emerging needs, especially for information on convective storms, and to develop a prototype for improved meteorological services. As work progressed, the need for common standards and protocols for information exchange emerged, and the CAeM Management Group, in response to the ICAO Meteorological Aeronautical Requirements and Information Exchange Project Team (MARIE-PT), expanded the scope of its team to include both Meteorological Services in the Terminal Area (MSTA) and Meteorological Information Exchange (MIE). The current WMO team, ET-M&M, works closely with the ICAO MARIE-PT to ensure understanding of user requirements. Due to sunset in 2013, the ET-M&M has finalized collection of international products and services, and is now finalizing gap analysis, collecting verification methods, and creating a demonstration of a comprehensive product or collection of products that better serve the needs of the global aviation community for accurate and timely weather information in the terminal and near-terminal areas.

This presentation describes the evolution of the WMO ET-M&M and highlights possibilities for improved products and services that incorporate both text and graphics.