1.5 RELATING A CONVECTIVE TRANSLATION METRIC TO CONVECTIVE IMPACT

Adverse weather imposes a major cost on U.S. aviation operations, but as much as twothirds of the $28 billion annual losses are avoidable (FAA 2010). Reducing delays and their respective costs requires improved weather forecasts as well as improved integration of weather and air traffic information. Integration can be as simple as overlaying weather and air traffic data or can entail a complex melding of the two. However, to improve the utility of weather integration for determining impact, the weather information must first go through an intermediate step of translation. Weather translation changes current or future weather information into “operationally-meaningful weather-related values such as threshold events and/or characterized National Airspace System (NAS) constraints” (FAA 2010). In other words, the meteorological data is transformed from basic weather information into aviation-specific parameters, such as, snowfall rates at an airport converted to an arrival/departure rate change. FAA NextGen plans call for a complete, automated integration of weather and aviationspecific information feeding decision support tools to develop Traffic Flow Management (TFM) solutions, such as the Airspace Flow Program