ITWS ceiling and visibility products
Summary
We present an overview of the product development strategy and discuss some of the technical considerations. It will be necessary to overcome significant scientific challenges in order to be successful. Our optimism comes from the improved operational meteorological data in the terminal area, from the ability to access and to process these data rapidly, and from ongoing advances in data assimilation for mesoscale models. Our role is to coordinate the fusion of these technical and scientific advances into operational aviation weather products and to evaluate the effectiveness of these products. Major scientific contributions are anticipated from the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Pennsylvania State University, and Colorado State University.