1. 1 CAPS Early Commercialization Activities 1996-2000 Richard Carpenter Weather Decision Technologies, Inc. June 2014

2. 2 Project Hub-CAPS 1996-1999 3-year, $1M R&D effort between OU and American Airlines – “CAPS + Hub airports” Goals: – to demonstrate the practicability of storm-scale numerical weather prediction for commercial aviation – to customize and integrate the CAPS forecast system into AA operations – to end with a usable system that can be run daily for or by AA Prompted by 29 Apr 1995 DFW Hailstorm – Severely damaged 80 AA aircraft

3. 3 Hub-CAPS Personnel CAPS Director – Kelvin Droegemeier American Airlines – Warren Qualley, Roy Strasser Hub-CAPS Staff – Richard Carpenter, Gene Bassett, Jason Levit Other CAPS Staff – Keith Brewster, Ming Xue, Steve Weygandt, David Jahn, Al Shapiro, Fred Carr, Min Zou Students – Project COMET-Tinker: Capt. Chris Stock, John Mewes, Eric Kemp – Chris Hudgin, Casey Crosbie, Mike Klatt, Jason Lynn, Shannon Stevenson

4. 4 Year 1: 1996-97 Built Perl-based ARPSControl forecast system Humble beginnings – One 9 km grid, 9 hr forecast each day – 12Z RUC, surface obs, 16Z ADAS analysis Early forecasts had issues – Convective spin-up, surface physics, coarse grid, lateral boundaries Cray J90 upgraded from 8 to 16 processors Presentations at 1997-99 AMS Aviation Conferences Resistance from AA’s union forecasters – Added workload – Effect of automation on job security – Distrust of early forecasts

5. 5 Year 2: 1997-98 Added outer 27-km grid – 4x daily on 27 km, 6-hr 20Z forecast on 9 km Greatly improved the spin-up problem – Added satellite and radar data – ADAS cloud analysis More and better products – Aviation Impact Variables – Improved quality and timeliness of products – Added animations to web page – Began reporting on forecast system health Opened up web access – Used by airlines, TV stations, NOAA, USAF, FAA Onsite at AA Weather Services – Conducted training sessions – Forecast evaluation and interviews 62% rated forecasts good to excellent 36% felt Hub-CAPS made a positive impact on their forecast

6. 6 Hub-CAPS gets noticed Mentioned in NWSFO and SPC discussions – THE ARPS SHOWS PRECIP STREAKING DIRECTLY ACROSS DFW – LATEST ARPS MODEL INDICATES THAT MORE CONVECTION WILL DEVELOP IN THE NEXT SEVERAL HOURS AS SURFACE WARM FRONTAL BOUNDARY MOVES NWD “We at the Fort Worth ARTCC Center Weather Service Unit have been using your Hub-CAPS site for some time now, and we find it to be one of the best forecast tools for the D/FW area” – Tom Hicks, Meteorologist-in-Charge, Center Weather Services Unit, Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center “We live and die by your web page” – Tom Skilling, Chief Meteorologist, WGN TV-9, Chicago

7. 7 Year 3: 1998-99 CRAFT – Real-time Level II NEXRAD data – Implemented during AMS-99 – KTLX, KFWS Improved grid nesting – 30/8/4 km Introduced Ensembles and Forecast Cycling Ingested AA MDCRS data AA endowed professorship in OU School of Meteorology – Currently Alan Shapiro

8. 8 AMS Annual Meeting 1999 (AMS-99), Dallas Real-time ARPS Forecasts and Analyses – Dedicated 128-node Origin-2000 at NCSA – 32/9/3 km forecasts Real-time Ingest of Fort Worth radar Kiosks provided by SGI Daily Weather Briefings (Steve Weygandt) Kelvin, Chancellor Hans Brisch, AA EVP Bob Baker, John Snow

9. 9 6 January 1999 Fog Burnoff Forecast

10. 10 Humble beginnings of a web page

11. 11 Final configuration of web page showing time index and past runs

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14. 14 Downburst PotentialSurface Isotachs & Streamlines CAPE & Helicity Surface VisibilityClear-Air TurbulenceIcing Potential Sample ARPSView Products Downburst Potential Surface Isotachs & Streamlines CAPE & Helicity

15. 15 CAPS/wx web page today

16. 16 Weather Decision Technologies “Launched out of OU” – OU 10% ownership – Royalties for exclusive licenses to ARPS and WxScope (Oklahoma Climate Survey) – Incorporated 1999, began operations 2000 Continued providing 6-km forecasts to AA Collaboration with CAPS – Williams Energy – ADAS-WRF for Paraguay (2004) Western Resources, Kansas (2000-2002) MetroCast for Kavouras/Meteorlogix (2000- 2003) – Run ARPS at TV stations on 4 proc SGI workstation

17. 17 Weather Decision Technologies – Today Located across the street in Partners Place 3 – 86 full-time employees, 38 with MS or higher – 6 CAPS alumni – AMS Fellow (Mike Eilts) – 4 CCMs – 2011 AMS Award for Outstanding Contributions by a Corporation – Serving on AMS committees Areas of Expertise – NWP, Radar/Nowcasting, Asset Protection, Enterprise and Consumer Alerting, Scalable Data Delivery – Licensed and patented technologies NWP – ARPSControl (Perl)  WRFControl (Python) – 200+ forecasts/day on 4 continents – Dedicated systems in Philippines, Dubai, Thailand

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