An Analysis of CCFP Forecast Performance For The 2005 Convective Season

Abstract

The Collaborative Convective Forecast Product (CCFP) continues to evolve as the primary tool through which the meteorological community and the commercial aviation industry have come together to create a common forecast to address the impact of convective weather on the national airspace at strategic time scales (2 to 6 hours). Since its inception in 1998, the product has been treated as a prototype that is modified annually through continuous and posterior feedback. The intended purpose of the CCFP is stated as being contingent on the view of either the consumer or the producer (WAWG 2005). For the consumer, the forecast is to be used for strategic planning of air traffic flow during the en route phase of flight (WAWG 2005). For the producers (forecasters), the aim of the forecast is to accurately represent convection that is most significant for managing the flow of air traffic at strategic time frames. The difference in views of the CCFP between producer and consumer lead to difficulty in determining appropriate verification techniques to satisfy all interested parties. From a consumer's view, one should evaluate the forecast with regards to traffic flow management decisions made with respect to each forecast and the resulting success and failure of those decisions. From a producer's perspective, the forecast should be evaluated with regards to the weather (i.e.,convection), and the definition of the forecast, and not in terms of how it is potentially being used or interpreted. While both views are important, the challenge of performing systematic analyses of the relation of CCFP to the performance of the national airspace system is a very complex problem not easily solved. By starting with an assessment from the forecaster's point of view, where the forecast is clearly defined (see Section 2a.), one may begin to understand and improve the primary input to a larger decision support system that is used in strategic decision making for commercial aviation. Mahoney et al. (2004) have combined aspects of both the producer and consumer's views to provide verification results for the 2004 CCFP. In this paper Section 2 will describe the CCFP in more detail to support the verification from a producer's point of view, the datasets used to verify the CCFP, and the verification methodology. Section 3 will describe the results of the verification of key components of the CCFP. Section 4 will present conclusions and discussion concerning the results found from the analyses.