Aeronautical Meteorology Programme

Message from the President

Kastelein, Sprinkle, Gordon and McLeod. They have shaped the development of aeronautical meteorology in the past two decades. I feel very honoured to join them and take the baton in February 2010. Expectations are immediately felt as we are heading towards the upcoming decadal conjoint meeting with ICAO in 2014 which will deliberate on the followings:

- Endorse a proposal for the new Meteorological Services in the Terminal Area (MSTA);
- Consider structural changes in the issuance of SIGMET to address long-standing deficiencies;
- Undertake a review of the World Area Forecast System (WAFS);
- Provide the roadmap for transition to Net-centric and System Wide Information Management (SWIM) concepts of Global Air Traffic Management, which will entail the replacement of the legacy alphanumeric codes by Extensible Markup Language (XML) for OPMET data.

In the next couple of years, the Commission will also need to:

- Assist Members to implement recognized Quality Management System (QMS) in the provision of meteorological services to international civil aviation by November 2012;
- Assist Members to implement Competency Standards for Aeronautical Meteorological Personnel (AMP) by November 2013.

Subsequently, Mother Nature added volcanic ash to the above priorities when the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull disrupted global air traffic in April 2010. WMO and its Members providing aviation meteorological services were in the limelight. A newly established WMO/IUGG (International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) Volcanic Ash Scientific Advisory Group is working with ICAO to improve the detection of volcanic eruptions and the measurement of ash cloud concentration, improve dispersion models especially the determination of eruption source parameters and model validation.

In its meeting in June 2010, the Executive Council also included aviation meteorological service as one of the five priority areas in WMO Strategic Plan / Operating Plan 2012-2015. No doubt, we have many challenges ahead, especially the serious deficiencies with SIGMET, implementation of QMS and Competency Standards for AMP, which will require dedicated efforts to overcome. And I do believe that we should also embrace change and grasp the opportunities to develop new services driven by the aviation user needs, including MSTA and SWIM.

Rest assured that I and the CAeM Management Group, especially Vice-president Mr Ian Lisk, Chair of the Implementation Coordination Team Ms Marina Petrova, and last but certainly not the least, Chief, Aeronautical Meteorology Division, Dr Herbert Puempel, will keep Members engaged and informed of the developments. Please also check the updates on the CAeM website (http://forum.14.caem.wmo.int/post14web/) and my newsletters.

Let’s join hands together for the betterment of the Commission, for the betterment of WMO, and for the betterment of aviation and the society!

CM Shun

C.M. Shun and Ian Lisk