Background
The Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS), jointly developed by NCAR-RAL, NOAA-Global Systems Division, and the National Weather Service's Aviation Weather Center (AWC) under funding from the FAA Aviation Weather Program, disseminates weather products to the aviation community via the web.
The AWC provides 24/7 support for operational ADDS; an experimental version of ADDS providing next-generation products and services resides at NCAR/RAL .
Results/Achievements
During 2005, a number of new products and services were added to these two sites. A complete suite of Current Icing Potential (CIP) and Forecast Icing Potential (FIP) products, developed by the FAA's In-flight Icing Product Development Team, was added to the experimental ADDS website. These products cover the continental U.S. plus Alaska and include current and forecast icing conditions. Within the continental U.S., there is also a new icing severity product to diagnose the current icing hazard. In 2006, a complete severity forecast will become operational.
The second version of Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG), developed by the Turbulence Product Development Team, was added to the experimental ADDS site. This version is expected to be approved for use on the operational ADDS site in 2006; a new third generation product will be displayed on the experimental site. With each new version, the product addresses users' need to see turbulence forecasts lower in the atmosphere.
The second-generation National Convective Weather Forecast product (NCWF2), developed by the Convective Weather Product Development Team, was up and running on ADDS in time for the 2005 spring/summer convective season. This product improves the accuracy of convective forecasts and extends the length of forecasts from 1 to 2 hours. NCWF2 has been incorporated into the Flight Path Tool and now shows users the probability of encountering significant thunderstorm activity en route.
Entirely new in 2005 were products that depict the height of cloud tops over oceanic regions (e.g., the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico) and a current analysis of ceiling and visibility (C&V) conditions over the contiguous U.S. A forecast version of the C&V product is planned for 2006.
The most significant operational ADDS upgrade was a new application version of the popular Flight Path Tool (FPT). The previous FPT was a Java applet that had to be downloaded each time a user wanted to start the tool. This wasted valuable time and had limited capability because of Java's inherent security structure. The new "application" version is downloaded only once (or if a new version is made available) and includes many highly requested features like saving the zoom state, overlays, previously-used cross-sections, and ability to print.
And finally, a user forum was initiated on experimental ADDS and a new data service for providing textual data (METARs, TAFs, PIREPs) in XML format was established. This new service provides users full access to ADDS data without having to utilize a web browser (which requires users to delete HTML code that surrounds the data returned within a browser). In 2006, the AIRMETs and SIGMETs will be included in the textual data server and a new gridded data service will be added to provide full access to all gridded icing, turbulence, convection, and ceiling/visbility products.