A well known problem in convection forecasting (and perhaps, by argument, the most important) is determining the location and timing of convective initiation in the atmosphere. High resolution forecast models struggle with initiation in environments that are not strongly forced, especially in conditions where a broad area of instability exists without well-observed atmospheric structures (boundary layer convergence, etc.) So, how does a meteorologist address this problem, when faced with producing a decision support tool to help aviation traffic planners determine where storms will affect the National Airspace System? The answer is not easy, and is the reason why the Aviation Weather Testbed works with academic partners that are producing content that helps aid in determining the liklihood of convection potential.
The image below is created from NCAR's Large-Scale Convective Storms product, and depicts the liklihood that a large scale convective storm will initiate at a given location. Of concern in this image is the high probability that a convective system will initiate around 19Z near the western Pennsylvania area, which could create a significant impact to the New York region airports later in the day.
The LCS product forecasts that after initiation, the storm system will move into central Pennsylvania and West Virginia, an area in the NAS that is especially vulnerable to creating delays given the jet routes there that direct traffic to the New England region:
New tools like the LCS product are evaluated daily by AWT experiment participants, and illustrates one example of new and emerging data sets that researchers are testing and refining to help forecasters with the difficult problem of forecasting convection for the NAS.
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