Display of Advanced Weather Products for En Route Air Traffic Controllers

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is currently installing new modern color displays in its en route air traffic control centers with the Display Replacement System (DSR) and is implementing a new Weather and Radar Processing (WARP) program that will provide greatly improved display of precipitation data derived from the National Weather Service WSR-88D weather radars. As these systems are being implemented, research and development is proceeding on improvements to the display of the basic data and on the processing and display of additional WXR-88D products and information from other weather data sources.

This paper describes experimental efforts by the MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development--funded by the FAA--to demonstrate the display of additional weather information to the en route air traffic controller. Sources of this data include the WSR-88D point products (including storm location and vector, hail, tornado, etc.), additional altitude layer stratifications of precipitation data, echo top information, and lightning data. Example displays are provided taken from a realistic prototype of the en route DSR display that incorporates synchronized recorded air traffic control data along with recorded data from local WSR-88D radars and the national lightning network. The initial reaction by air traffic controllers to the experimental displays is discussed.