Operations

Military surface operations can benefit from high-resolution operational weather forecasts in a variety of ways, including the use of precipitation forecasts for soil trafficability estimation, cloud and fog forecasts for assessing the usefulness of electro-optical weapons systems, and wind forecasts for conducting precision air drops and for calculating the transport of hazardous material and obscurants released on the battlefield.

One example of the use of the 4DWX model in a rapidly evolving situation was its employment in support of ground operations in Afghanistan in late 2001. The National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) required high-resolution meteorological forecasts for different operational areas in order to assess the consequences of the possible release of hazardous material. For this application, the meteorological model had an interface to a DOD transport and dispersion model - the Second-order Closure Integrated PUFF (SCIPUFF) model that is part of the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC) system.