Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP): statistical guidance of wind speed, direction, and gusts for aviation weather

The Meteorological Development Laboratory is redeveloping the Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP), a tool used to provide statistical guidance for sensible weather elements. Two of the elements the current LAMP system is producing guidance for are wind speed and direction. These elements are produced every three hours with input from the Nested Grid Model (NGM) Model Output Statistics (MOS). The new system will be updating the latest Global Forecast System (GFS) MOS to produce forecasts for wind speed, direction, and gusts in an effort to improve the guidance for aviation purposes. LAMP wind guidance will be produced hourly for each hour out to 25 hours for the conterminous US, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.

Equations have been developed for the u- and v- wind components and speed at 0900 UTC. The main focus on redeveloping these weather elements was to create equations that would better forecast wind directional shifts related to frontal passages. This paper will show a few cases of strong frontal passages which LAMP forecasted wind shifts in excess of 90 degrees in an hour. After subjectively analyzing these cases, objective verification scores comparing forecasts of wind speed and direction of LAMP, GFS MOS, and persistence were computed for an independent sample. These scores reveal that the LAMP system has more skill than persistence throughout the period. LAMP shows improvement on the GFS MOS out to 6 hours, and after that has the same skill. To add further aviation guidance, wind gust development was investigated for the same cycle time and produced favorable results. Results summarizing these findings will be shown.