Publications

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is sponsoring the development of the Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS), which is designed to acquire all of the weather data that is available in the terminal area, both ground-based and aircraft sensed, and to provide short-term (0 to 30-minute) predictions of microbursts, wind shear, gust fronts, runway winds and terminal-area ceiling and visibility. Additionally, the ITWS will be generating the 4-dimensional wind field at many levels in the terminal area, mainly for use by other FAA terminal air traffic control automation systems, but also available as a graphical display. An area of interest and concern to the developers is the interaction between the automated, very-short-term predictions of the ITWS, and the National Weather Service (NWS) aviation meteorologist, who is responsible for issuing terminal forecasts and other aviation advisory and warning products. This paper will describe the ITWS as currently planned and will explore the possible relationships between the ITWS and the NWS forecaster. Consideration will also be given to the NWS's new Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) and how ITWS information might be used in the terminal forecasting process. This paper is intended to spark discussion of the role of the ITWS in the NWS forecasting process of the future.