Analysis of Aviation Weather Websites for Forecasting Accuracy

This report provides an analysis of several aviation weather websites, including Aviation Weather Center (AWC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Met Office, and Netweather. The AWC, a subsidiary of NCEP, offers tools like the Flight Path Tool and Graphical Forecast for Aviation, utilizing charts like METAR plots and stereographic projections. NOAA's National Weather Service provides active alerts and forecast maps covering pressure, temperature, and precipitation. The Met Office, UK's national weather forecasting agency, uses RADAR to analyze rainfall and isobars to depict surface pressure. Netweather offers an easy interface with high-resolution models and real-time data, covering sleet, rain, snow, and storms, and provides various charts and tools, including GFS, NetWx Model, and snow risk maps, with premium versions unlocking additional features for pilots. The report references the specific URLs used for data collection from each of these websites.

11/1/2018
Aviation Management
<YOUR_NAME>
<INSTITUTION_NAME>

S. No Name of the Site Citation Description
1 https://www.aviationweather.gov (Aviation
Weather
Center, 2018)
Aviation Weather Center (AWC)
is a subsidiary of National Centres
for Environmental Prediction
(NCEP) which is USA’s one of the
renowned government
organizations in aviation
forecasting. AWC provides
information on convection,
turbulence, icing, winds and many
more. It makes use of many useful
tools such as Flight Path Tool,
which is a graphical collection of
turbulence, winds, relative
humidity, temperature, visibility
and satellite observations,
METAR and TAF in AIRMETS,
SIGMET and many other
advisories. The data can be
analysed in 3D, slicing both
horizontally and vertically at the
flight level or path respectively. It
gives the feature of zooming the
high resolution images and
automatically places the user in the
best projection. Another tool is the
Graphical Forecast for Aviation to
view the icing, temperature, winds,
clouds and many others in
AIRMET and SIGMET format.
Text data servers improves the
analysis by providing access to

real time data. AWC uses many
types of charts namely METAR
plots, surface plots, stereographic
and many more. The regions are
marked well in order to
differentiate.
2 https://www.weather.gov/ (National
Oceanic and
Atmospheric
Administration
, 2016)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) is an
agency of US department of
Commerce which covers the
analysis of oceans and the
atmosphere. One part of this
organisation is National Weather
Service (NWS) which particularly
covers the atmosphere. It warns
prior to any happening. In its
official site a separate column is
dedicated to inform under ‘Active
alerts’. Its forecast maps cover
many conditions like pressure,
temperature, troughs, precipitation,
clouds, wind and many. The short
range forecasts cover the patterns
of pressure, circulation centres and
the precipitation type and extent.
The precipitation is analysed
qualitatively. The medium range
covers large area. The surface
analysis depicts the highs, lows,
dry lines. The precipitation charts
analyse the probability and the
magnitude of precipitation at a
particular time. The temperature

charts analyse the maximum and
the minimum temperatures in
degree Fahrenheit. Skew-T graphs
are employed for depiction.
3 https://www.metoffice.gov.uk (Met Office,
2017)
The Meteorological Office (Met
Office) is UK’s National weather
forecasting agency that works
under the Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy. It provides the weather
accurately and covers rainfall,
surface pressure, long range
forecasting, cloud, precipitation,
relative humidity, temperature and
many others. The rainfall is
analysed using RADAR. The
colours helps to differentiate
between the amounts of rain at
different places. The yellow colour
indicates moderate rainfall, dark
blue indicates very low while sky
blue is for the highest. The surface
pressure chats depict the
distribution of pressure over the
area. It uses isobars for this (lines
of equal pressure). Thus the
pressure is easily identified
whether it high or low and also the
pressure value at the centre. It
forecast 5 days before the day and
gets updated every 12 hours. The
isobars are solid lines. Fronts are
also depicted using this chart.

4 https://www.netweather.tv (Netweather,
2018)
It provides an easy interface as
compared to the above ones. It
makes use high resolution models
to evaluate the values along with
real time data collected from
ground after observation. The
covered quantities include sleet,
rain, snow, hail, hurricane, storms
and lightening. There a lot of
charts & tools used such as GFS,
NetWx Model, Ensembles, rainfall
RADAR, snow risks map,
Jetstream, Lightening detectors,
storm risk detectors, Global
Jetstream and ECMWF charts. The
data is updated every 4 times a day
and not just UK, it also gives the
weather conditions for every world
city. The Jetstream forecast allows
to view up to 16 days with a gap
of 3 hours each. Sliders and
buttons makes it easy to use it in
order to see the forecast at a
particular time. The now risk maps
are updated up to 4 times a day.
These are generated with the help
of Global Forecast System (GFS).
The snow depth, precipitation
types and the extent of risk can be
analysed using the sliders to jump
at a particular instant of time while
using arrow keys to scroll through
it. The lightening map gets
updated every 15 minutes and uses

Met Office’s ATD lightening
detector. Thus, it is very accurate.
The storm risk maps use many
factors in order to predict the risk
due to snow in percentage. The
stratospheric temperatures can also
be analysed up to 16 days with an
interval of 3 hours. In the premium
version the pilot can unlock cloud,
custom GFS, super Ensembles,
satcasts, UV index, increased
RADAR range and many more
features.

References
Aviation Weather Center. (2018, November 1). METARs. Retrieved from
https://www.aviationweather.gov: https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar
Met Office. (2017, March 9). Weather. Retrieved from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . (2016, May 23). Short Range Forecasts
(Days ½-2½). Retrieved from http://origin.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov:
http://origin.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/basicwx_ndfd.phphttp://origin.wpc.ncep.noa
a.gov/basicwx/basicwx_ndfd.php
Netweather. (2018, November 1). Jetstream Forecast. Retrieved from
https://www.netweather.tv: https://www.netweather.tv/charts-and-data/jetstream