Weather is still a critical risk factor for aviation. Anything that improves the accuracy of weather forecasts will greatly benefit the aviation industry’s level of safety and operational efficiency. General improvements in numerical forecast models and new forecasting techniques have certainly helped, but to meet the particular requirements for aviation weather in the United States, the federal government turned to a more specialized effort, establishing the Aviation Weather Research Program (AWRP) of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
In the early 1990s, the FAA introduced the Aviation Weather Products Generator (AWPG) Program, the goal of which was to provide aviation-specific current and short-term forecast data to the aviation community. The applied research of AWPG emphasized the standard aviation weather hazards such as turbulence, icing, etc. The operational component of AWPG later was phased out, to be replaced by other systems, but the research aspect was continu…
