Probabilistic Guidance of Aviation Hazards for Transoceanic Flights

An important aspect in strategic (~24 hours) planning for transoceanic flights is the acquisition and interpretation of forecasts of weather hazards such as convection that might be encountered along a desired flight path. The currently mandated significant weather forecasts (SIGWX) are deterministic and manually-generated by the London and Washington World Area Forecast Centers (WAFCs). Future products are likely to be gridded, probabilistic forecasts derived from a combination of numerical weather prediction model outputs generated by multiple centers. Analyses are presented that leverage multiple global ensemble forecasts to generate a probabilistic guidance product, with an overarching goal of improving the process of predicting significant weather in the strategic time-frame. Emphasis is placed on calibration of individual models and subsequent pooling of probabilistic forecasts (i.e., harmonization). Several techniques for calibration and combination of models are discussed and show how improvements in the harmonized forecast are possible even with spatially and temporally varying performance of each individual model. The advance of a validation dataset and adoption of appropriate metrics is an integral component of this research and development effort.

This research is supported by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the FAA.