History of IATA requirements for gridded ICE, TURB and CB Cloud Products

Initial requirement from ICAO MET Divisional Meeting (2002) WAFSOPG tasked WAFCs to develop prototype (2003) 1 st WAFS Science Meeting (2004) Prototypes shown to Group. WAFCs tasked to produce trial products (2005) Trials shown to Group (2006) 2 nd Science meeting (2007) Feb Group tasks WAFCs –Verification (present findings at 3 rd Science Meeting) –Provide “Hi-Glance” visualization of new products, as possbile replacement to today’s SIGWX.

Between all of these meetings, the WAFCs attended the IATA Met Task Force meetings: –Provided updates –Sought and incorporated input Iterative process continued at all semi- annual meetings Met Task Force provided representative to WAFSOPSG meetings

It is important to understand that the main purpose to aviation of SIGWX information is for Situational Awareness during flight planning, not for tactical flight following or routing changes during flight. This is in line with NextGen initiatives that will result in weather data being ingested into decision support systems. An example of that is how upper winds and temperatures have been incorporated into flight planning systems for more than 30 years. IATA provided input about the look and feel of automated SIGWX charts and stated that the accuracy of the products be at least as good as human-generated forecasts.