New Meteorological Services Supporting ATM
Meteorological Services in the Terminal Area (MSTA)
...providing MET services to support a move from Air Traffic Control (ATC) to more integrated and collaborative Air Traffic Management (ATM)
Th Ch The Challenge ll (1)
ICAO Annex 3 stipulates MET Services ...in support of aerodrome operations Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) Trend-type Landing Forecast (TREND) Aerodrome Observations (METAR/SPECI) Aerodrome Warnings g ...in support of FIR, regional, global operations AIRMET/SIGMET WAFS products (GRIB data, Charts) Most (but not all) are provided in highlyhighly condensed, coded, textual format
Th Challenge The Ch ll (2)
todays These Services do not meet the needs of today s aircraft operators and users of the ANS Not specific enough Nothing between aerodrome and FIR/global scale Limited (or no) info on important parameters
The problem has been recognized by ICAO MET services required by ATM to optimize traffic flow in the en-route and terminal areas
MSTA objective bj i
ICAO and WMO groups are working on this
to address new and evolving ATM user needs and to avoid the
costly parallel development of similar weather products of varying and confusing data formats
to develop a detailed MSTA proposal, supported by ICAO and the
aviation user communities communities, ready for endorsement by the next Conjoint ICAO MET/AIM Divisional Meeting/WMO CAeM Session (currently scheduled for 2014) and reflected in ICAO Annex 3 (in 2016) )
Focusing effort on a particular need: The Terminal Area
Wh Will I What It B Be? ?
A web-based net-centric user-oriented service Fed by a database that will support other services such as
charts and a simplified version (text or object) for uplink to th flight the fli ht deck d k
Gridded/object data would be available for direct integration
i t users into decision-support d i i t systems t (DSTs) (DST )
Integrate the most important info in an easy-to-use fashion,
and d possible ibl colour-coding l di to t indicate i di t potential t ti l impact i t of f ATM
MSTA Scenarios S i
Not just weather parameters separately, but grouped into
scenarios
wind (type [crosswind, wind], height, threshold) convection forecast (TS, CB, radar related parameters hazardous weather - liquid/ freezing/ frozen precipitation and
accumulation
Low cloud/ visibility storms (sandstorm, snowstorm, tropical cyclone) In-flight turbulence in-flight aircraft icing Parameters to support Continuous Descent Operations (CDO)
MSTA Timeframes Ti f
Three Th timeframes i f to support differing diff i needs d
Nowcast (0 to 1 1-2 2 hours) High-resolution, High resolution rapid update
Supports tactical decision-making
Short-term forecast (up to 6 hours) Lower resolution, covers
greater area Supports tactical decision-making
Outlook (up to 2 days ahead) Even coarser resolution
Supports pre-tactical (or strategic) decision-making
e.g. e g advance notice of low visibility conditions or other situations that could result in flight delays being imposed by ATC
Deterministic/Probabilistic
People are most comfortable with deterministic answers
(i.e. yes/no, specific values). However, they suggest a level of y and p precision that can be misleading g at times certainty
For
example, when predicting the occurrence of a thunderstorm at a specific point (a specific circle of 5 km radius) skill currently is limited to about 30 minutes radius), circle, larger g , reducing g the accuracy y targets, g , or taking g a different approach (i.e. probabilistic)
Thus longer-term predictions need to be presented using a The challenge is to create probabilistic guidance thats
meaningful DSTs need to incorporate probabilistic info meaningful.
Also the need to incorporate a measure of confidence in the
o ecast forecast
Enroute Meteorological Services
Wind, temperature, icing, turbulence and CB forecast
information is now available in gridded form for the entire globe suitable for direct ingest into DSTs and Flight Planning/Flight Management Systems.
This information can be processed using suitable software to
provide displays of the parameters listed above, or the information can be integrated into flight planning systems (airlines) or produce aircraft trajectories (ATM).
The spatial and temporal resolution is expected to improve
further over the years ahead.
C Conclusion l i
Meteorological services in the future (2016-2025) will be less like todays
services which largely provide packaged information, e.g., METAR and TAF combine all of the weather elements into a simply code code.
In future, the separate elements will be provided for direct ingest into
ATM and flight deck systems. The Decision Support Tools (ATM) and Fli ht Management Flight M t Systems S t (FMS) will ill process th these elements l t as required, i.e., these systems will do their own packaging and presentation (which will include overlaying meteorological information with other data, such as NavData, aircraft situation displays, radar displays etc). etc)
Future meteorological information will be provided in probabilistic terms
to give users greater confidence in the integrity of the information.
Meteorological information will be provided from a common database
(within a State) so that all users will have access to the same information.
