The NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) has extended the AWIPS FX-Advanced workstation with a tool, called MetGen, for generating aviation weather products. MetGen is designed to be used by forecasters at the NCEP Aviation Weather Center. The focus of this initial effort is the generation of AIRMETs as well as consistent high-resolution grids of the hazards, such as icing and turbulence, for which AIRMETs are issued.
This paper will describe the technical aspects of this work, including the high-level structure of the software, the programming languages used, and technical limitations. Additionally, we will provide a general overview of how the FX-Advanced supports such extensions.
The workstation provides very good support for creating graphic overlays (in latitude and longitude space) of simple geometric shapes such as points, lines, polylines, and polygons, which can be edited in a variety of ways. Also, support is provided for the management of multiple overlays containing editable shapes, such as with a time-sequenced series.
The use of MetGen is highly illustrative of how these simple capabilities can be leveraged. For example, MetGen uses editable polygons to allow forecasters to define regions of a particular hazard. The locations of the vertices of the polygons are then translated to a distance/bearing relative to the nearest VOR (an aviation location identifier) using 16 compass point directions. Furthermore, since AIRMETs are required to use distances in 10-mile increments, MetGen automatically snaps anchor points to meet that requirement. These examples of the functionality of MetGen on the FX-Advanced show that these simple graphical capabilities can provide nearly end-to-end assistance for the task of AIRMET generation.
This work is funded by the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program