METEOROLOGICAL WARNINGS STUDY GROUP (METWSG)

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1 METWSG/4-IP/11 24/4/12 METEOROLOGICAL WARNINGS STUDY GROUP (METWSG) FOURTH MEETING Montréal, 15 to 18 May 2012 Agenda Item 5: SIGMET/AIRMET 5.1: SIGMET implementation issues IMPLEMENTATION OF A CENTRALIZED MWO IN FRANCE AND SIGMET COORDINATION PROCEDURES IN EUROPE (Presented by Patrick Josse) SUMMARY This paper presents the new organisation of the SIGMET watch in France implemented in September 2011, the dissemination of SIGMET information in a graphical form for En-route control centres and for pilots and the ongoing actions in Europe to improve the consistency between the different MET Service providers. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 The French airspace is divided into five flight information regions (FIRs), covering an area of km2. As it is often the case in Europe, the French FIRs are thus relatively small compared to other areas in the world with, for example, less than km2 for the FIR REIMS. 1.2 Given the typical geographical extent of the weather phenomena for which SIGMETs are issued, the situation in which the area impacted by a SIGMET is totally included within a FIR is not the most frequent, in general, several FIRs are impacted, possibly with a different timing. 1.3 When two different meteorological watch offices (MWOs) are responsible for two adjacent FIRs, a specific coordination is needed to avoid any discrepancies at the border between the two FIRs. Until September 2011, five different MWOs were responsible for the FIRs BREST, BORDEAUX, MARSEILLE, REIMS and PARIS (namely, Rennes, Bordeaux, Aix, Strasbourg and Paris MWOs), in coordination with the national centre in Toulouse since This organization led to a more consistent SIGMET production in France. (6 pages) METWSG.4.IP en.doc

organisation of the SIGMET watch in France implemented in September 2011, the dissemination of SIGMET information in a graphical form for En-route control centres and for pilots and the ongoing

2 METWSG/4-IP/ In the concern to rationalize the MET Service Provision and to lower the associated costs, several decisions have been taken by Meteo France, in agreement with the French Civil Aviation Authority (DGAC/DTA). One of them was to implement a single central MWO in Toulouse, responsible for the five French FIRs. 2. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CENTRAL MWO IN TOULOUSE 2.1 An implementation project has been launched late 2009 to prepare this change, with two main focuses. 2.2 The first one was to facilitate the transfer of the local expertise that had been gathered in the regional MWOs to the forecasters in Toulouse. This was achieved by bilateral exchanges of forecasters between the centres and a specific work on the operational handbooks. 2.3 The second one was the development of a new production environment for the MWO forecaster (Figure 1). With this new module of the SYNERGIE workstation, the forecaster can draw the extent of the area covered by the hazard, without taking into account the geographical limits of the FIRs. The forecaster then describes the details (vertical extent, displacement etc) and the (text) SIGMETs are generated automatically by intersecting the contour drawn by the forecaster and each FIR area. Figure 1: Illustration of the MWO production environment: on this example, 3 different SEV TURB SIGMETs will be generated.

(DGAC/DTA). One of them was to implement a single central MWO in Toulouse, responsible for the five French FIRs. 2. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CENTRAL MWO IN TOULOUSE 2.

3 - 3 - METWSG/4-IP/ The central MWO in Toulouse became fully operational on 15 September TOWARDS GRAPHICAL SIGMET 3.1 With this new environment, only a subset of the possibilities offered in Annex 3 Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation to describe the geographic area of the SIGMET is used: polygon, relatively to a line defined by two points and relatively to two orthogonal lines defined by a longitude and a latitude. Depending on the actual shape of the area to describe, the description relatively to one or two lines may not be applicable. In this situation, the polygon is systematically used. In practice, the number of French SIGMETs with a polygon description significantly increased since September These SIGMETs with polygons are well adapted for use by an automated system capable of plotting them on a screen. However, they are difficult to read by a human being. The need for a graphical product was thus reinforced. 3.3 The Annex 3 template implies to have a graphical SIGMET associated to each text SIGMET. For the situation presented on Figure 3 above, three graphical SIGMETs (i.e. three charts) would be produced. Each graphical SIGMET would present the intersection of the initial contour with the boundaries of the corresponding FIR. 3.4 It appeared more useful to develop a product on which the full picture of the SIGMET situation over the French airspace would be given. With a very high refresh rate (less than 5 ), this product gives a snapshot of the situation. The text SIGMETs are associated to the chart (Figure 2). 3.5 This graphical presentation has been made available to the Air Traffic Controllers and the feedback after 6 months is very positive: the understanding of the area affected by the SIGMET is now straightforward, whereas it used to require a painful interpretation of longitudes and latitudes, with a high risk of error. 3.6 Since April 2012, a graphical SIGMET brief for the French airspace is available on Meteo-France s self briefing system Aeroweb (

polygon, relatively to a line defined by two points and relatively to two orthogonal lines defined by a longitude and a latitude.

METWSG/4-IP/11-4 - Figure 2 : Graphical description of

4 METWSG/4-IP/ Figure 2 : Graphical description of the SIGMET situation over continental France (5 March 2012 ).

5 - 5 - METWSG/4-IP/11 4. EUROPEAN SIGMET COORDINATION IN THE MET ALLIANCE AREA 4.1 The MET Alliance is a group of national aeronautical meteorological service providers from seven European States that cooperate on further improvement and rationalization of the meteorological services for aviation. Each Member has a unique knowledge of its own area of operations. Within the MET Alliance this expertise is shared and resources are brought together. 4.2 The national aeronautical MET service providers from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxemburg, Netherlands and Switzerland are members of the MET Alliance group. 4.3 Within the MET Alliance, a project has been launched to improve the consistency of the SIGMET production between the members. 4.4 The eight members of MET Alliance now share some of their national tools; they ve for example granted access to their national self briefing systems to each other. 4.5 An action has been initiated to harmonize the forecaster s handbooks, and more particularly, the criteria and thresholds used for SIGMET issuance by the MET Alliance partners. 4.6 An internal web portal is available for the MWO forecasters depicting the in real time the FIRs with valid SIGMET (Figure 3). Figure 3: Screenshot of the web portal used by the MWO forecasters: the status of the SIGMET situation for the Met Alliance FIRs and for the neighbouring FIRs is depicted. In the Documentation section the operational handbooks of the Met Alliance MWOs are available.

services for aviation. Each Member has a unique knowledge of its own area of operations. Within the MET Alliance this expertise is shared and resources are brought together. 4.

6 METWSG/4-IP/ Last but not least, operational coordination procedures prior to the issuance of SIGMET have been put into place: Meteo-France/Belgocontrol, Belgocontrol/KNMI, DWD/KNMI and DWD/MeteoSwiss/Austrocontrol. The goal is to eventually have such procedures implemented at every national border between Met Alliance members. 5. ACTION BY THE GROUP 5.1 The group is invited to note the information in this paper. END

into place: Meteo-France/Belgocontrol, Belgocontrol/KNMI, DWD/KNMI and DWD/MeteoSwiss/Austrocontrol.

SIXTH MEETING SUMMARY

SIXTH MEETING SUMMARY WAFSOPSG/6-IP/13 3/3/ /11 WORLD AREAA FORECAST SYSTEM OPERATIONS GROUP (WAFSOPSG) SIXTH MEETING Dakar, Senegal, 21 to 24 March 2011 Agenda Item 6: Development of the WAFS 6.1: Improved GRIB 2 forecasts