Automated Atmospheric Observations from Military Aircraft

The Naval Research Laboratory, Marine Meteorology Division, (NRL) and Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) are now receiving and decoding automated real-time data from certain military aircraft. At present, these data include high temporal-resolution data from Predator UAV training flights at the Indian Springs Auxiliary Airfield outside Las Vegas and fifteen-minute position reports from U.S. Air Force KC-135s flying worldwide. The presentation will discuss how the observations are taken, and how the data are collected from the aircraft, sent to NRL/FNMOC, and processed for eventual use by NAVDAS (the NRL Atmospheric Variational Data Assimilation System—the 3DVAR data assimilation system used operationally to provide the initial condition for the U.S. Navy's global numerical weather prediction model). In addition, the data are compared to other nearby data received operationally at FNMOC and to the NOGAPS (Navy Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System) forecast fields used in NAVDAS as background fields.