For several years, efforts have been underwayto correlate pilot weather avoidance behavior withobservable weather parameters available fromconvective weather forecast systems. To date,the development of Convective WeatherAvoidance Models (CWAM) has focused primarilyon the en route airspace used by aircraft at cruisealtitude [1]. The en route CWAM translatesobserved or deterministic forecasts of echo topsand vertically integrated liquid (VIL) into aprobabilistic forecast of the likelihood of pilotdeviation at each point in the forecast grid. Inrecent years, the WAF has been cited as a reliableindicator of the impact of convective weather onair traffic operations [2,3], and has beenincorporated into the Route Availability PlanningTool (RAPT) operational prototype [4].This paper will present a CWAM for arrivals,starting from the top of descent in en routeairspace and continuing into the terminal airspaceto touchdown. The arrival CWAM was based onthe analysis of a database of convective weatherimpacts, determined from the observable weatherproducts from the Corridor Integrated WeatherSystem (CIWS) [5] and arrival trajectories fromseveral major terminals in 2009. Past studies ofterminal weather impact [6,7] have identifiedaircraft that penetrated severe weather or madeclear deviations around convective cells within theterminal. In this study, the definition of weatherimpact and avoidance was expanded to includepilot and air traffic control (ATC) decision makingoccurring when the aircraft is outside of theterminal with regard to the expected weatherimpact upon arrival in the terminal. Examplesinclude rerouting to an alternate corner post,holding in en route airspace, or diverting to analternate airport when weather is expected alongthe planned terminal trajectory. These types ofterminal weather avoidance decisions can often bemade when the aircraft is many miles outside ofthe terminal.The en route CWAM uses spatial filtersapplied to the echo tops and VIL to obtain the bestcorrelation between the weather and pilotbehavior. This paper will evaluate the currentCWAM filters and identify alternate spatial filters oradditional weather products that may bestcorrelate pilot and ATC weather avoidancedecision making in the terminal. Ultimately thegoal of this work is provide air traffic managersand automated decision support tools with aweather avoidance field for effective managementof arrival traffic during convective weather impactsin terminal and near-en route airspace.
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