In order for a pilot to take off with her plane, she nes detail information about the weather at the departure airport, the airspace en route, the destination airport and any alternate airports.
For all commercial airports around the world, there are airport weather forecasts prepar according to the same standard. These so-call Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts (or TAF for short) provide the weather information for the next few hours that is relevant to the pilot in a short, cod form. The TAF contains information on wind, visibility, cloud cover and weather phenomena such as rain, snowfall or fog and sometimes on temperature.
Fig. 1: Example of a TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) Image: MeteoSwiss
The form and content of this forecast will be determin by the
International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO
As the national aviation weather provider, MeteoSwiss is responsible for providing TAF (international) for Swiss airports. Accordingly, they are creat, issu and monitor by aviation weather meteorologists in the weather centers in Zurich and Geneva around the clock and 365 days a year.
TAFs are not only important for the safe handling of air traffic at airports, but also help to maintain and increase the efficiency of air traffic at airports. Against this background, it is clear that the TAF forecasts and their quality are an important building block for the overall system performance of air traffic. That is why they are verifi.
The TAF verification
MeteoSwiss continuously checks and monitors the quality of the TAF. It has been
MetAlliance
– and thus in conjunction with various European aviation taiwan mobile database weather services – is involv in the development of a verification system that is internationally recogniz and support. Switzerland’s TAFs have been verifi according to this scheme since 2008.
The weather condition prict in the TAF for a specific period of time is compar with the corresponding observation (METAR) at the airport. A peculiarity of the TAF forecast is that it does not prict a single value for a parameter at a specific time, but rather a range of values that are to be expect. Therefore, in the verification, two conditions are verifi for each parameter for each point in time: the highest observ value is us to evaluate the highest forecast value, and the lowest observ value is us to evaluate the lowest prict value.
Meteorologist at work
Fig. 2: TAF creation in the MeteoSwiss forecast and aviation the happy company 3 keys to companies where people fall in love weather center at Zurich Airport. Image: MeteoSwiss
Identify strengths, weaknesses, mistakes
The evaluations are us for various purposes. On the one hand, detail analyses of the forecast quality for specific variables at the various airports can be deriv. This makes it possible to identify america email strengths, weaknesses or systematic errors in the forecasts. These findings can then be us to optimize the forecasting process, for example by developing forecasting tools specifically and by focusing on these points in the training and further ucation of meteorologists.
On the other hand, the verification provides key performance indicators for the continuous monitoring of forecast quality, such as the TAF quality measure shown below. It summarizes the verification results of the variables wind direction, wind spe, gust strength, visibility, weather and cloud cover for the national airports of Zurich and Geneva in a single measurement and is evaluat every six months.