Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP): A Statistical Post-processing System for the Past, Present, and Future (Invited Presentation)

Nearly 35 years ago, Bob Glahn first documented the National Weather Service's (NWS) efforts in the Techniques (now Meteorological) Development Laboratory to develop a “LAMP” system to produce statistically post-processed short-range forecast guidance. While the definition of the LAMP acronym has changed as the system evolved, the goal of LAMP, to provide good quality objective forecast guidance for aviation in the short-range period, has remained the same.

Today LAMP stands for the Localized Aviation MOS Program, and LAMP guidance is centrally created every hour at the NWS National Centers for Environmental Prediction. LAMP guidance is produced for 1692 stations in the contiguous United States (CONUS), Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, and on the National Digital Forecast Database 2.5-km CONUS grid. It provides forecast values and probabilities for the next 25 hours. The guidance is available at NWS Weather Forecast Offices, across the Satellite Broadcast Network and NOAAPort, in the National Digital Guidance Database, and on the internet, and is used by NWS and military forecasters, private meteorologists, the Federal Aviation Administration, commercial airlines, energy companies, and private citizens.

This presentation will provide an overview of the LAMP system of the past, where the system is today, the present challenges for statistical post-processing for aviation guidance, and where we expect LAMP to be in the future as we meet those challenges.