Wx Watch: The Weather's Future

Think of aviation weather as having two components. One is the dynamic component, consisting of the meteorological processes we learn about in the course of our pilot training. This includes obtaining a working knowledge of the weather that affects us in flight and applying that knowledge to decisions affecting a flight's safety and comfort. We're all pretty much familiar with this component because we deal with it every time we fly.

Another aspect of aviation weather lives a more hidden life. It's the bureaucratic component, consisting of various branches of the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Weather Service, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Interior, among many other agencies. Interest groups from the private sector, such as AOPA, also play major roles.

While confined to an existence in conference rooms, through telephone lines, and in fat government documents, this side of aviation weather has as many highs and lows as the kind outdoors. What's more, the decisions made by the weather bureaucracy affect pilots as surely as any nearby front or thunderstorm.

Right now, elements of the weather bureaucracy are under considerable pressure to cut costs. This was driven home at the National Aviation Weather User's Forum, an event held in Reston, Virginia, in early December 1993. The forum was one of an ongoing series of meetings designed to help the government and the private sector thrash out the future of the weather collection and dissemination network. The cost-cutting imperative is at odds with another goal — that of developing and exploiting new technologies to bring about more, faster, and more accurate reports and forecasts.

FAA spokesmen at the forum said, in essence, "Look, everybody, the Clinton Administration is telling us to cut our current $427-million aviation weather budget by up to 30 percent, so tell us where to cut by listing the products or services you think are least useful. While you're at it, prioritize the emerging technologies, and let us know which ones to pursue and which to dump."

Now obviously, that's a gross oversimplification, but you get the drift of 1994's marching orders. Anthony Broderick, the FAA's associate administrator for regulation and certification, said he felt that the private sector could take a big load off the FAA. Private aviation weather information services, for example, could simply take over the functions that flight service stations traditionally perform. In addition, more automation could limit expensive human involvement, and controllers could be relieved of functions involving weather advisories.

After listening to a day's worth of speeches, the participants were instructed to retire to their respective focus groups and return later with their lists of cuts and priorities.

To do these exercises, the groups were told to refer to a slew of matrices defining user needs and priorities. There were matrices for VFR pilots, IFR pilots, airline pilots, airline dispatchers — you name it. Along one edge of each matrix was the phase of flight. Along another were the various weather products. For each phase of flight, the value of each product was rated — high, medium, or low priority, plus whether or not the products affected safety, capacity, or efficiency of the flight. It was quite a piece of work — work performed by the Mitre Corporation and paid for by the federal government. The entire summary of needs was called a "strawman."

The groups were: general aviation — private; general aviation — business; commercial — airline company; commercial — airline pilot; and commercial — regional and commuter airlines, and air taxi. There was a strawman for each and — wouldn't you know it — just about every box on each matrix was colored purple, meaning high priority. It was the government's own work, based on user feedback, saying loud and clear, "don't cut anything."

But we were told to cut, so we did. It was function following form, writ large. Our own matrices were created — four of them. Votes were cast and tallied. I watched one round of voting in which the "general aviation — private" group decided that winds aloft information, synoptic summaries, and density altitude — to name a few products — could be done away with. Is this any way to make policy on an issue as important as weather information?

On the one hand, including users in the decision-making process is just plain good sense. On the other, it's important for everybody concerned not to let self-inflicted structural constraints get in the way of a more open dialogue. All this talk of strawmen and arbitrarily lopping off critical weather reports may prove only one thing: that the participants are able to follow the day's agenda. Under a constantly shifting set of guidelines and a changeable political climate, it's easy to see why the government takes so long to come to a decision, let alone implement it.

Those at the meeting were assured that the forum will be just one step in a series of moves toward the weather system of the future. That's a good thing. In its closing presentation, AOPA was quick to emphasize the need for more, not less, weather information. For example, AOPA President Phil Boyer said that those state-run automated weather observation system units that aren't already hooked into the national distribution system should be plugged in immediately.

Other AOPA concerns center on better access to — and more frequencies for — Flight Watch, and the soundness of awarding the nation's weather dissemination functions to the private sector. True, private vendors may be better suited for the presentation and dissemination of weather products, and the government is much better at collecting and analyzing observations and data. However, involving the private sector introduces some critical issues.

For one thing, pilots are already paying — through fuel taxes — for the services now rendered by FSSs, and this includes Direct User Access Terminal. By and large, pilots are satisfied with the weather briefing services they now receive. Worst, perhaps, is that under a privately run weather dissemination system, we'd in effect be paying double for our weather information — once through the fuel tax (which won't be going away anytime soon) and once again through access fees.

Other problems include the potential for monopolization of the market, changes and standardizations of presentations, and the issue of access — not to mention liability concerns.

Incidentally, all the other working groups couldn't think of a weather report or product they'd be willing to do away with, either.

Other members of the weather establishment were also on the scene, crowing about the latest in research and giving us a promising glimpse of things to come.

• Dr. Elbert W. (Joe) Friday, Jr., assistant administrator of the NWS, assured us that the infant ASOS (automated surface observation system) is providing very accurate automated surface weather observations. In a study pitting 30,000 ASOS reports with a like number of human observations, the NWS found only 116 cases where man and machine disagreed. As for the 45 newly operational WSR-88D Doppler radars (the successors to the 35-year-old WSR-57 radar network we've been using), they are providing innumerable benefits over the old system. Ten years ago, Friday said, the false-alarm rate for prediction of severe thunderstorms was at a tremendously unacceptable 80 percent. Using the new Dopplers, the false-alarm rate is down to 25 percent. That number should drop some more as experience is gained with a fully implemented system. A national Doppler radar network, once called Nexrad (Next-generation Radar) is quickly becoming Nowrad. When implementation is complete, Friday said, we'll have the first complete radar coverage of all areas west of the Continental Divide.
  
  The infant network of Terminal Doppler Weather Radars is also coming along, bringing with it the promise of microburst and wind-shear avoidance for aircraft operating out of larger airports.
  
  A new system of wind profilers is on the horizon, according to Friday. Profilers are ground-based acoustic sounding devices that can determine winds and temperatures aloft by sending high-speed radar pulses deep into the atmosphere. By sensing energy disturbances, profilers can give highly accurate wind speed and direction information up to the 53,000-foot level. Temperatures can be read up to 18,000 feet. Perhaps best of all, the units operate automatically and give atmospheric soundings every six minutes. Right now, a network of 29 wind profilers are in a demonstration phase, but they'll be operational all over the United States as appropriations are made. Ultimately, they'll all but replace the twice-daily deployment of radiosonde balloons that give us our current winds and temperatures aloft reports and forecasts.
• Dr. Ralph Peterson, of the NWS' Office of Meteorology, discussed the future of numerical weather prediction. This branch of meteorology uses computer power to generate sophisticated models of the atmosphere and make forecasts based on equations and algorithms. Until recently, models provided analyses at 12 layers of altitude; now there are 28 layers. A 50-layer model is scheduled for later this year. Together with an increase in raw data (much of it provided by automated weather observations), a reduction in data grid size, and new computers, the computing power available to numerical prediction is due to expand eightfold by the end of 1994. Instead of two computer runs per day, there will be four. All of this can add up to more accurate, timely, and far-reaching forecasts.
• Unisys displayed a concept for a microburst-prediction radar. This equipment senses air movements at 5,000 to 10,000 feet agl, and Unisys claims that this equipment ought to be able to give pilots and controllers advance warning of the conditions that precede microburst development.
• Dr. Steven Bussolari, assistant group leader of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Air Traffic Surveillance Group, presented a method of uplinking weather data and graphics to cockpit displays via Mode S transponder. MIT's testbed was a Cessna 172.
• Dr. Charles Scanlon, a senior research engineer at National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center, summarized a similar project. This involved the transmission of weather text and graphics to a cockpit via satellite broadcast. A NASA Boeing 737 has been fitted with such a system, including on-board weather software integration with the airplane's navigation system. This allows all manner of weather information to be displayed over an aircraft's route of flight, as shown on a dedicated weather display screen.

No doubt about it, there are tremendous changes coming our way in aviation weather. Doppler will soon be nationally operational. Profilers, once through the shakedown phase, will come about. Forecasts will become better and more frequent.

But will all these improvements make it to those who need it most — the pilot flying a piston single at low altitude? That question will take some time to answer. The thorny issue of the private sector as sole source of preflight weather information promises to be the centerpiece of much future debate. As for in-flight weather displays, the chief concern will be affordability. In a future where the government may divest itself of these costly efforts so vital to safety, we face the prospect of having more and more costs passed along to us.