Weather exerts a disruptive influence on aviation, both in the terminal area and en–route air traffic flow. Weather–related delays clearly increase during the convective weather season (approximately April through September), but also winter weather can cause havoc throughout the national airspace system. Reliable detection of hazardous weather and predictions thereof several hours in advance are essential for aviation users to achieve safe and efficient use of the airspace. Currently, weather avoidance is largely done in real–time responding to existing weather hazards (i.e., on a tactical basis) rather than through planning ahead based on anticipated weather (i.e., strategic decision). This is partly because of the weather forecast uncertainty and also because of a limited integration of weather information into automated air traffic management decision support tools.

The FAA supports an ongoing research and development effort for providing detection and prediction products of convective weather aviation hazards to serve the needs of air traffic controllers, supervisors and traffic flow managers, airline dispatchers and pilots, and other government agencies concerned with aviation. The current focus is on the development of CoSPA, a storm prediction effort for aviation, in order to replace a plethora of currently available weather forecast products by a single forecast. CoSPA will embody the best techniques available today, with an open modular architecture that enables easy exchange of algorithm modules, as new or upgraded techniques become available. CoSPA builds upon a mixture of observation–based expert systems and numerical weather prediction model to provide seamless 0 – 8 h forecasts of convective hazards and heavy snowfall. An initial forecast demonstration experiment of the CoSPA prototype started in the summer 2008. During the summer of 2010, selected operational aviation users FAA and airline facilities had access to the CoSPA forecasts for an operational evaluation and benefits assessment. The operational evaluation turned out to be a great success, and CoSPA will be made available to aviation users again during the summer 2011. CoSPA is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Research Applications Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory, and the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Global Systems Division under sponsorship of the FAA.

Primary Contacts

• STEINER, Matthias: | HAP DEPUTY DIRECTOR | ph: 2720 | email: msteiner
• PINTO, James | PROJ SCIENTIST II | ph: 2874 | email: pinto
• STONE, Ken: | PROJECT MANAGER I | ph: 8920 | email: kstone