World Area Forecast System Updates for Medium and Long Term Goals

The World Area Forecast System (WAFS) currently provides global gridded forecasts of wind, temperature, relative humidity, turbulence, icing and cumulonimbus (Cb) cloud. Current forecasts, while meeting minimum requirements, also have some functional deficiencies, such as forecasting for an uncalibrated unitless value instead of a measurable atmospheric variable with standard units. As part of the ICAO Aviation System Block Upgrades (ASBU) for the near term (Block 0), the World Area Forecast Centres (WAFC) intend to provide forecast improvements with such efforts as: providing turbulence forecasts in units of Eddy Dissipation Rate (EDR), providing calibrated categorical icing severity forecasts, providing calibrated probabilistic forecasts for turbulence, icing and Cb, providing a finer resolution global grid, and providing improved verification. This presentation will further demonstrate the steps to be taken to meet these goals by 2018 along with outlining improvements for WAFS forecasts by 2028.