Operational Potentials and Realities of MDCRS

Automated meteorological observations from commercial aircraft, used experimentally in operational forecasting for a decade, have become an operationally critical data set. The Meteorological Data Collection and Reporting System (MDCRS) is providing on the order of 50,000 observations of wind and temperature daily over North America. Some 6-7,000 of these are taken on take-off and landing. Collectively, these latter provide vertical "profiles" of temperature and wind to roughly 35,000 feet. Moisture information will be added in the near future. The reported data are being assimilated directly into the NCEP models and form the backbone of the data set for the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model with a grid of 42km. An "operational" assessment has been conducted which provides solid examples of the value of the profile information to field forecasters. Studies are underway (and reported elsewhere in the session) on the potential for substituting MDCRS data for radiosonde data at selected sites.

This paper examines the potentials for the MDCRS as part of the operational upper air sounding program over North America and the realities of realizing those potentials. For a system to be "operational" in the context of NWS programs it must satisfy identified requirements, meet standards of quality and availability, and be cost-effective. Data quality has been demonstrated through comparisons with other data sets. The data have been shown to be cost-effective to obtain. What has yet to be explored is the full extent to which MDCRS can extend it's geographic coverage and how to assure the long term availability of the MDCRS data.