ATM-Weather Integration Plan - Joint Planning and Development ...

Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO)
DRAFT v0.7
ATM-Weather Integration Plan
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Weather integration in support of common flight profiles may have value for functions that
determine airspace changes and problem predictions/resolutions (aircraft-to-aircraft, aircraft-toairspace,
aircraft-to-TFM Flow Constraint, Aircraft-to-Severe Weather).
The functional evolution Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) is a likely candidate for weather
integration since the TMA is envisioned to continue in operation at several locations that are
frequently impacted by convective weather and hence could be used for experimental testing of
concepts.
Integrated Time-Based Flow Management (ITBFM) will provide traffic managers an improved
capability to develop, execute and adjust a common and integrated departure-to-arrival schedule
for all aircraft that supports both TFM objectives and, to the extent possible, NAS customer
preferences. There may well be differences in the details of the weather forecast translation into
ATC impacts for DFM versus TMA. Hence, it will be important to determine the anticipated
mode of operation for ITBFM so as to determine if there are additional weather-to-capacity
translation issues that need to be considered in achieving an operationally useful ITBFM.
Provide Full Flight Plan Constraint Evaluation with Feedback involves timely and accurate NAS
information that allows users to plan and fly routings that meet their objectives. Constraint
information that impacts proposed flight routes is incorporated into Air Navigation Service
Provider (ANSP) automation, and is available to users for their pre-departure flight planning.
Examples of constraint information include special use airspace status, significant
meteorological information (SIGMET), infrastructure outages, and significant congestion events.
Weather needs identified include a de-conflicted common weather picture of enhanced forecasts
of convection, turbulence and icing. Improved observations are also needed.
Specifically the feedback will include weather information, probabilistic information, TMIs
(including delay information), airspace information (e.g., High Performance Airspace
(HPA)/Mixed Performance Airspace (MPA), Area Navigation (RNAV) routes), required aircraft
performance characteristics (e.g., Required Navigation Performance (RNP), RNAV
requirements), active routes, restrictions (e.g., Letter of Agreements (LOAs), Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs), Special Activity Airspace (SAA)), terminal status information (e.g., airport
conditions, runway closures, wind, arrival rates, Runway Visual Range (RVR), airport (current
and planned) configurations, surface information and other NAS status information and changes
along the path of the evaluated route or filed route.
Realizing a robust capacity prediction capability will require major effort in at least three areas.
Continued progress in diagnosing and forecasting relevant weather phenomena over the 0-8 hour
time scales needed for TFM is essential. Research may be focused on extending the look-aheadtime
for convective weather forecasts to 6-8 hours, and on improved 0-2 hour “nowcasts” of
turbulence and airport weather conditions (ceiling and visibility, winds, winter precipitation) that
affect capacity. Viable methods for estimating and conveying the uncertainty of future resource
capacity predictions must be defined. It is envisioned that “ensemble” approaches are most likely
to be effective – that is a set of discrete weather forecasts will be developed that span the
expected range of future scenarios, and these will be translated individually to associated
estimates of capacity constraints on specific NAS resources.
25 April 22, 2009