The development of a gridded aviation weather database (AWeD) to be used by the aviation community is in progress at the Canadian Meteorological Centre. The system makes use of ever-expanding computerization capabilities and of high quality and high resolution numerical weather prediction models that bring forward new perspectives for producing and disseminating aviation weather information.
The aviation weather database described here is the core component of a future aviation weather display system to be used as a briefing-aid tool. Development work has so far resulted in the creation of a database of gridded aviation-impact variables that can be interactively queried through a user-friendly JAVA based application to have access to flight specific weather information. The driving model for the database is the operational Canadian Regional model. Variables are ingested into the aviation database on a high resolution grid which covers all of Canada, adjacent waters as well as a significant portion of the United States. Space and time characteristics of the variables are similar to, or derived from, those of the model's actual operational outputs : 24 km horizontal resolution, 41 flight levels (from mean sea level up to 40 000 feet) interpolated from the 28 sigma levels of the model, and a 3-hour time resolution from zero to 48 hours. Most variables, including icing and turbulence, are calculated using algorithms that are adapted versions of pre-existing operational ones. The remaining variables were already available as standard outputs from the driving model. The database is updated twice per day (00 and 12 UTC) in real time. In its current state the aviation weather database includes : temperatures, winds, icing, turbulence, cloud fraction, relative humidity, vertical velocity, tropopause pressure and temperature, freezing level, total cloud cover, instantaneous precipitation rate at the surface and station pressure. The current icing algorithm used in based on supercooled liquid water content forecast by the driving model. The turbulence algorithm is based on the deformation vertical shear index weighted with the magnitude of the wind speed. Real-time observation data are also incorporated in the database. Utility programs have so far been developed for the treatment of METARs, TAFs, FAs, SIGMETs and AIRMETs. Future programs will be developed for other alphanumeric data as well as for satellite imagery, radar data, and others.
The aviation database is made accessible on network through a users interface. This application allows the users to enter flight parameters, such as departure and arrival points, check points along the planned route, estimated time enroute and flight level. Series of meteorological products, all tailored to each particular flight, in plan view and vertical cross-section along the route, can then be requested. It is the first known fully interactive system that can generate tailored meteorological aviation products from a numerical model gridded database. A verification system is also under development as part of the database, in order to assess the reliability and performance of the different aviation impact variable algorithms.
The 8th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology