Overview of the 2016 Winter and Summer Aviation Weather Testbed Experiments

Lack, Steven A.; Lack, Steven A.

The AWT winter experiment took place over 2 weeks in late February 2016 and ran jointly between the Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City, MO and the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, NJ. There were 4 major themes of the winter experiment. The first was to continue to test the production of a national cloud and visibility product created by AWC forecasters using GFE within AWIPS2. Forecasters from weather forecast offices (WFOs) were brought into the experiment to share their knowledge of grid editing with AWC forecasters. The resultant grids were subsequently evaluated by end-users at the FAA Technical Center. The second theme tested icing and turbulence guidance and tools within the AWIPS2 framework as AWC prepares to transition to the AWIPS2 platform for much of its operational products. The third theme was evaluating experiment global icing, turbulence, and convective guidance for AWC’s global graphics desk. The guidance was both deterministic and probabilistic in nature and expands the suite of products available for forecast production. Finally, experimental non-convective Collaborative Aviation Weather Statements (CAWS) were issued for significant turbulence and icing events in an attempt to bridge the gap between the G-AIRMET (graphical AIRMET) product and the SIGMET product produced by AWC. This product received positive feedback by pilots and air traffic managers in attendance at the FAA Technical Center.

The AWT summer experiment took place over 2 weeks in late August 2016 and also ran jointly with the FAA Technical Center. Three major themes were explored during this period. The first was a demonstration of a fully collaborated, real-time effort of Digital Aviation Services (DAS) involving AWC forecasters providing first guess cloud and visibility fields to several simulated WFOs that were set up in the Operations Proving Ground (OPG). This was an initial test of the fully integrated field structure in which the AWC forecasters will be using the Graphical Forecast Editor within AWIPS similarly to the WFOs with the result being digital aviation grids that can support consistent aviation products, including the TAF. In addition, probabilistic ceiling and visibility guidance will also be provided from the aviation grids to be evaluated by end-users at the FAA Technical Center. The second theme, tested AWC’s ability to produce the Convective SIGMET completely within AWIPS2. This leveraged work from NOAA/ESRL Global Systems Division (GSD) on the Hazard Services tool which allows for easy polygon creation and attribute selection within one platform. The third portion of the experiment focused on improvements to the convective CAWS process. The improvements were based on the ongoing summer 2016 evaluation field campaign by the FAA, which assessed the quality of the product and process from a traffic management perspective. New convective forecasts and toolsets, including new CCFP forecasts, new convective guidance such as the LAMP/HRRR, GOES-R convective tools, OPC, and INSITE, were evaluated at this desk.

This paper will highlight the results, successes, and challenges moving forward for the Aviation Weather Center research-to-operations and operations-to-research processes.

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879 Overview of the 2016 Winter and Summer Aviation Weather Testbed Experiments