Project Description
The Research Applications Laboratory is addressing oceanic weather needs for aviation through the development of an intelligent system that generates 0-2 hour nowcasts.
Remote, oceanic regions have severely limited data availability and therefore, have few, if any, high resolution weather products that indicate current or future locations of convection. Convective hazards impact the safety, efficiency and economic viability of oceanic aircraft operations by producing turbulence, icing and lightning and by necessitating aircraft rerouting while in-flight, leading to higher fuel costs and delays. To improve convective products for the oceanic aviation community, the NASA-sponsored Oceanic Convection Diagnosis and Nowcasting project is focused on oceanic convective nowcasting over a 0-2 hour period. Polar-orbiting and geostationary satellite observations are utilized in addition to global model results. Resulting products focus on the needs of pilots, dispatchers, air traffic managers and forecasters within the oceanic aviation community.
Currently, our region of focus is the Gulf of Mexico. Expansion into the Pacific region will begin in 2008.
Collaborators in this NASA-sponsored research include the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Naval Research Laboratory-Monterey, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory.
Project Sponsor: NASA Earth Observing System, in response to NRA #NNH05ZDA001N, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES-2005). The material within is based upon work supported by NASA under award No. NNA07CN14A.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
