Interactive Forecast Visualization Tools for the U.S. Armed Forces

The Air Force Weather Agency's (AFWA's) GrADS-based interactive visualization tool, (called IGrADS, for Interactive GrADS), enables forecasters to pick a wide variety of forecast products tailored to the needs of their customers. IGrADS is available over the AFWA's webpage, JAAWIN (https://weather.afwa.af.mil) and has been operational since early 2002. It is also available over the SIPRNET and JWICS. The interface enables forecasters to create (potentially) many hundreds of millions of varieties of visualized or alphanumeric products designed to meet their customers' needs. These products range from meteograms, user-defined meteograms, forecast skew-Ts, vertical cross-sections, forecast maps (including four-panel variations), worldwide cloud analyses, and eight different types of alphanumeric meteorological output. Forecasters have the option of choosing from among eight operational numerical forecast models, two of which are global and six regional mesoscale models. The most extensive product lines are available for AFWA's MM5. This will be supplanted with Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model once it is declared operational. IGrADS users can choose any display region they desire, can animate forecast data, and can bookmark frequently needed charts, then recall them with current model data whenever required. The presentation highlights recent expansions of IGrADS capabilities in response to customer requests, including four-panel chart options, ceiling/visibility charts, and isotachs on vertical cross-section charts. Additionally, AFWA recently pioneered a new Java-based interactive visualization tool called the Weather Interactive Data Display System (WIDDS), allowing forecasters to interact with terrestrial weather data and tailor visualizations to fit the their. WIDDS was borne out of the warfighter's desire to have interactive display of both weather observations (METARS, SPECIs and Synoptics) and Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts for the entire world. The application can also display data specific to aviation interests, including AIREPS and PIREPS. The WIDDS interface enables forecasters to not only zoom into an area of interest but also to select parameters such as data density, data fields (such as altimeter, ceiling, visibility, cloud amounts, and others for METARS) and various METWATCH controls to meet specific warfighter needs.