Aviation Content Services

WDT Services include: 

• Quality-controlled national radar mosaics, allowing users to see where active convective storms are occurring as well as the height of the storms and their motion without having to be trained to distinguish ground clutter and anomalous propagation from actual echos.
• Nowcasts of future radar out to 6 hours from WDT’s proprietary implementation of the MAPLE radar forecasting system. 
• Global satellite imagery, allowing long range flight planning
• Data feeds of WDT’s proprietary Worldwide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN)

• Gridded forecasts of standard aviation parameters (flight level winds and temperature, cloud ceiling, visibility, freezing level, etc.) and aviation impact variables (turbulence, icing, low-level wind shear, lightning potential) derived from numerical weather prediction (NWP) grids, delivered directly to customer flight planning systems in standard formats.  WDT provides regional coverage for North America and Europe from its operational WRF modeling system out to 84 hours every 6 hours, as well a North American domain that produces a 12-hour forecast every hour.  Additionally, WDT provides global coverage by applying specially-tuned versions of our aviation algorithms to the NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) model. 

Aviation Decision Support System (AWDSS)

Similar to the Integrated Terminal Weather System (ITWS) used by the US Federal Aviation Administration, AWDSS provides a comprehensive turnkey solution to provide safe and effective airport operations by integrating all available meteorological data at an airport with a suite of nowcasting algorithms and (optionally) a fully integrated mesoscale NWP system (MesoDSS) to provide automated detection, nowcasting, and forecasting of weather hazards affecting airport operations.  WDT partners with providers of advanced observing systems (microwave thermodynamic profilers, radar wind profilers, LIDAR system, etc.) to deliver and integrate new platforms as needed to address the particular forecast challenges at the airport.  ADWSS features include:

• Robust alerting engine to provide rapid, clear communications from the nowcast algorithms directly to the meteorologists and ATC personnel.  The alerting system is fully configurable by the local meteorological staff, including the thresholds, whether or not certain types of alerts must be reviewed by a meteorologist, etc.
• Advanced radar processing algorithms, integrated with any local airport Doppler radar system, to provide automated detection of microbursts, gust fronts, and severe storms, including estimated time of arrival and departure.  Algorithms include the MIT/Lincoln Laboratory’s Automated Microburst Detection Algorithm (AMDA),  the Machine Intelligent Gust Front Algorithm (MIGFA), and the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s Severe Storm Analysis Package (SSAP). 
• Incorporation of vertical radar wind profilers and local AWOS observations to detect low-level wind shear and turbulence hazards.  WDT can provide a full custom wind profiler solution via its partners if not already available at the airport.
• WDT’s FogCaster system, employing fuzzy logic algorithms to combine information derived from geostationary satellite, local thermodynamic profiler, AWOS observations, and output from the mesoscale NWP model.  FogCaster provides fully automated detection of fog, its depth, and its estimated time of burn-off. 
• Separate customizable displays for the airport meteorologists and ATC personnel.

For more information, contact Brent Shaw @ 405.579.7675 x246.

Click here to download our AWDSS Brochure