Improving Gridded Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP) Guidance by Using Emerging Forecast and Observation Systems

The aviation community requires high quality, fine resolution gridded forecasts that are frequently refreshed to account for rapidly changing weather. For some aviation elements, such as ceiling height and visibility, observations are too sparsely distributed to capture fine detail or provide information on the same scale as the forecasts. Mesoscale models and new observing systems are emerging that can provide valuable information to help fill in the gaps.

The National Weather Service's (NWS) Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) has produced high quality aviation guidance from the Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP) for many years. To further improve LAMP guidance, MDL is investigating methods to leverage the valuable information provided by new mesoscale models and emerging new observational systems.

This talk will review current LAMP products and challenges still affecting the aviation forecasting community. The presentation will highlight new initiatives in MDL to utilize forecasts from the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model and observations from the Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) System as well as Total Lightning data from the Earth Networks Total Lightning Network (ENTLN) to provide improved Gridded LAMP guidance for convection, lightning, ceiling height, and visibility, and to produce new guidance for storm top height.