1. Background
High quality science applied to societal problems is at the heart of the RAP
mission.
Decision-makers in a number of important disciplines need improved
information and tools. RAP is an integrator of research and technology across
disciplines and organizations, helping to transfer new capability into the
domain of practical application for those who have to make weather-sensitive
decisions in government agencies and the private sector.
Transfer of technology for aviation safety decisions continues to be the main
emphasis of RAP. Improved capability for the automated forecasting of
aircraft icing, thunderstorms, snowfall affecting airport ground operations,
turbulence, ceiling and visibility, and oceanic weather continues to be our
major activity. Significant technology transfer has already taken place,
including improved education and training, transfer of advanced products to
operational agencies, and delivery of turn-key systems.
Although aviation is our primary focus area, major transfer of technology is
also taking place to DoD, in the form of turn-key forecasting systems and
algorithms. In addition, systems for public weather forecasting have been
transferred to the private sector. Applications to road weather information are
being developed for transfer beginning next year.
This year six systems are highlighted in our technology transfer section:
a turn-key aviation weather system developed for Taiwan,
an innovative website developed to provide aviators improved briefing
information, and
an automated national-scale en-route aircraft icing diagnosis algorithm
an airport system providing alerts for hazardous terrain-induced windshear and
turbulence
a turn-key system to provide high-resolution weather forecast support to military test
ranges
a decision support system to provide guidance for Winter road maintenance
Taiwan – Advanced Operational Aviation Weather System (AOAWS)
The Advanced Operational Aviation Weather System (AOAWS) is a 6-year aviation
weather system modernization program (1997-2003), sponsored by the Taiwan Civil
Aeronautics Administration. The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) commissioned
NCAR to design, build and implement the AOAWS in Taiwan as a technology transfer
program between the U.S. Government and Taiwan. NCAR/RAP is leading the program
and other participants include NCAR/MMM, and the Institute for Information Industry, a
local Taiwan not-for-profit information technology organization.
In FY2002, the AOAWS System successfully completed its final Site and Reliability
Acceptance Tests. The System is now operational and being used by the aviation
community in Taiwan and by airlines that fly into Taiwan. Although NCAR will provide
support and maintenance services through 200, the system is being operated on a daily
basis by the Taiwan CAA.
The AOAWS consists of advanced meteorological sensor systems (at airports and within
the Taiwan airspace), a communications infrastructure, a product generation component,
a system server component that distributes products to users, and several product displays
that present the advanced aviation weather information to end users. AOAWS system
components are fully integrated to form an operational, turnkey system that serves the
aviation community flying within or through Taiwan airspace.
The AOAWS will provide the CAA, the airlines and the flying public with state-of-theart aviation weather technology for: 1) hazardous weather phenomena that affect aviation
operations (e.g., in-flight icing, clear air turbulence, windshear, and thunderstorms), 2)
weather phenomena that affect airspace capacity and safety at the major hub airports, and
3) weather phenomena that affect overall efficiency of aviation operations. The AOAWS
is a complex system utilizing several advanced weather sensing subsystems, integrated
communications, advanced software developed by NCAR/RAP, advanced numerical
weather forecast models developed by NCAR/MMM, and NCAR/RAP developed
advanced interactive and web based display technology. System displays are located at
the Taipei Aeronautical Meteorological Center, several Weather Forecast Stations and
Flight Information Service facilities at Taiwan airports, and at the Taipei Area Control
Center.
This technology transfer project was completed on schedule and within budget. The CAA
has expressed strong interest in a second phase program that will be designed to ensure
the CAA continues to have a state-of-the-art aviation weather capability.
FY02 technology transfer accomplishments in 4DWX program
Since 1995, a team of RAP engineers and scientists have been developing and
implementing a Four-Dimensional Weather (4DWX) system for the U.S. Army Test and
Evaluation Command (ATEC), and recently, for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency
(DTRA). As the system consists of late-breaking engineering technologies, and scientific
advancements in numerical weather prediction – and furthermore must operate reliably in
live, mission-critical situations – RAP has been faced with a substantial technology
transfer challenge, which includes the regular training of DoD staff at seven locations
around the U.S. on systems that are frequently updated.
The 4DWX system provides the ATEC meteorology groups with their primary source of
weather data, forecasts and analyses. Forecasting decisions are routinely based on the
4DWX tools that provide high-resolution, range-specific information and forecasts of
low-level winds, expected dispersion patterns of bio-chemical simulant agents, noise
propagation patterns from high-explosives detonation, pinpoint thunderstorm cell
locations, and model-derived climatological information. In addition, capabilities to
quickly provide worldwide weather information and model runs are available for support
of international missions. The system consist of a suite of modeling, algorithmic and data
handling capabilities designed to provide advanced meteorological analysis, forecast and
display capabilities for meteorological units at Army test ranges and proving grounds
throughout the United States. System modules include 1) a data management, ingest,
archival, and display system; 2) a product distribution system employing the WWW: 3)
high-resolution (1.1 km) MM5 modeling capabilities; and 4) fuzzy-logic techniques for
short-term thunderstorm forecasting. To date, 4DWX systems have been fielded at seven
ATEC ranges around the country, and are continuously monitored and improved by the
4DWX development team. This unique system represents a union between the research
and operational communities, allowing state-of-the-art techniques to quickly be
transferred from the laboratory to operational use. Within the last year, 4DWX systems
have been transferred to another branch of the Army to support live operations in
Afghanistan, and to DTRA, in support of live exercises to mitigate the effect of weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Figure 1 shows the
general 4DWX system architecture, in terms of the product flows.
One of the substantial challenges in technology transfer has been in creating and
deploying stable linux clusters for running the high-resolution numerical weather
prediction (NWP) component of the systems. While traditional, single-image, shared
memory platforms like SGI’s and Fujitsu’s are very suitable for NWP applications,
especially for their stability aspects, the 4DWX clients require a number of platforms to
be deployed, but the hardware budget does not allow for the purchase of these mainframe
class machines. As a result of this, RAP has had to develop the forecast systems on
distributed memory, parallel processing clusters, running the Linux operating system, and
using commodity hardware components. The challenge to produce stable platforms is
particularly acute in that the 4DWX NWP systems run continuously around the clock,
and are usually located in remote facilities where the power source tends to be unstable
and generally unreliable.
Figure 1: 4DWX Weather Product Flows
Figure 2 shows examples of the front and back views of these clusters, which tend to be
configured as either 16- or 32-node systems for each of the test ranges.
Figure 2: Front view of systems located at NCAR Foothills Lab, and back view
of systems located at NCAR Mesa Lab
As part of the technology transfer work for these clusters, RAP has had to incorporate
advanced power monitoring and fault-tolerant software into each cluster system, as the
range test schedules have become more demanding and critical since September 11,
2001. RAP continues to have challenges here, and is in the process of reviewing all
aspects of system reliability, including developing more extensive training material for
range forecasters and technicians. In FY03, it is anticipated that live system monitoring
and alert notifications will be made available to wireless hand held devices, allowing
range personnel to react more quickly when problems arise.
While test range forecasters have a great deal of experience in interpreting the local
meteorology, few have much experience and understanding in the realm of highresolution mesoscale modeling, i.e., understanding the limitations of the model in various
regimes, and distinguishing the atmospheric signal of highly resolved processes from
noise. An ongoing challenge in transferring 4DWX technology to the ranges has been to
impart sufficiently high levels of interpretive skills to the forecasters, so that they may
better utilize the model forecast output information. RAP’s ongoing mesoscale
forecasting training to the ranges has substantially improved the forecaster’s effectiveness
in providing test guidance to their own clients. In FY02, new training modules were
created to stimulate new ideas on how to interpret the model output. The test range
meteorology chiefs are currently considering ways of incorporating such training in the
forecaster’s annual reviews, so as to make the study of mesoscale forecasts integral to
their annual performance. An example of a training module can be found at:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/individual/davis/atec/training.html
Winter Road Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS)
In FY2000, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Road Weather Management Program began a
project to develop a prototype winter road Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS). The MDSS is
designed to provide guidance on winter maintenance decisions (treatment times, types, rates, and locations)
specific to winter road maintenance routes. Five national research centers have participated in the
development of the functional prototype MDSS. The participating national labs include the Army’s Cold
Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), National Science Foundation’s National Center for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL),
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and
NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL). NCAR’s Research Application Program (RAP) is the lead lab for
technical development and program coordination.
The requirements gathering phase of the MDSS
project began in fiscal year 2000. In 2001 the goal
was to develop a conceptual prototype MDSS and in
FY2002 a functional prototype was developed. An
MDSS field demonstration and verification project will
occur during the winter months of 2003 in Iowa for
plow routes near Des Moines and Ames. System
refinements will be made based on the results of the
field demonstration and they will become part of the
second system release.
The MDSS project goal is to develop a prototype
capability that capitalizes on existing road and
weather data sources, fuses data to make an open,
integrated and understandable presentation of current
environmental and road conditions, processes data to generate diagnostic and prognostic maps of road
conditions, provides a display capability on the state of the roadway, provides a decision support tool which
provides recommendations on road maintenance courses of action together with anticipated consequences
of action or inaction.
Technology transfer is a major component of the MDSS Project. The MDSS functional prototype software
(version-1) was developed between October 2001 and September 2002. The overarching goal of the MDSS
project is to accelerate the time to market for MDSS capabilities; therefore the MDSS and its components
were made available to the public on a non-exclusive basis on 20 September 2002. Interested parties can
register to obtain a CD with documentation and code via a web site at NCAR/RAP. Another objective of the
MDSS project is to create a surface transportation weather capability in the national labs and with surface
transportation stakeholders. The stakeholders who are public-sector transportation operators and privatesector weather information service providers will be the beneficiaries of applying that capability.
The MDSS FP is designed to be a template for future
operational capabilities. It is envisioned that the
private sector together with local DOTs will review the
FP and jointly develop operational versions of the
system whether standalone or integrated with broader
decision support systems.