Attachment C Statement of Work.pdf

STATEMENT OF WORK

Water Vapor Sensors for Commercial Aircraft

National Weather Service Office of Observations

Commercial Observations Portfolio

1.0 BACKGROUND

The US National Weather Service (NWS), beginning almost two decades ago, partnered with commercial airlines and other aviation i4ndustry partners to install high quality water vapor instruments on commercial aircraft. From these aircraft, NWS procures vertical profiles of water vapor on ascent and descent at major airports across the continental United States. These sensors are installed on a subset of the few thousand commercial aircraft distributed across most major US commercial airlines that also provide vertical profiles of wind speed and direction, temperature, pressure, and related meteorological variables at high vertical resolution in the atmosphere from takeoff to cruise level, and multiple vertical heights. In 2016, this capability was expanded with other partners to obtain similar data from smaller aircraft and airlines generally serving smaller airports between the major airports. These data have proved to be of great utility to the NWS forecast and warning mission, particularly in improving the skill of short-range and high resolution Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). The aircraft data fill gaps in data provided by other observing systems, such as the NWS rawinsonde (“weather balloon”) network and data provided from space-based capabilities.

Yet, gaps in observational coverage remain in various geographical domains that if filled may further still improve the skill of our forecasts and warnings. One such region is off the West Coast of the United States and extending westward and southward into the central tropical Pacific Ocean, where there are no rawinsonde launches and otherwise a dearth of high-quality, in situ observations throughout the depth of the atmosphere of water vapor (humidity). This is the region where the well-known phenomena known as Atmospheric Rivers occur, where moisture from the central tropical Pacific in transported eastward and northward into the West Coast along distinct plumes up to jet stream level, occasionally resulting in flooding rainfalls and heavy mountain snows. Better forecasts that quantify in advance the amount of precipitation that will fall are of great importance not just for public safety, but also for the water resources community along the west coast, which could benefit greatly from such information in determining allocations of water supply to agriculture and municipalities.

With this requirement, NWS seeks to partner with industry to install water vapor sensors using the latest technology on a small number of aircraft that also provide other meteorological information, and that provide service and routes between the West Coast of the continental US and the central tropical Pacific. NWS may seek to install water vapor sensors on additional aircraft in other regions with recurrence of similar high impact weather phenomena, and where our forecasts and warnings may be improved with additional aircraft-based humidity observations.

2.0 REQUIREMENTS

2.1 High Level Requirements

2.1.1 Obtain any Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) required by the Federal Aviation Administration pertaining to installation of either to the proposed water vapor sensor or proposed aircraft type, and related hardware and software systems.

2.1.2 Manufacture and install up to five sensors, one on each of five aircraft during the base year of the contract, and up to 30 in the option year.

2.1.3 Establish a real-time communications capability for transmitting the water vapor and other meteorological data and related metadata from the aircraft to receiving systems on the ground.

2.1.4 From industry receiving capabilities on the ground, at the end of the Base Year provide an end-to-end demonstration of delivering a sample set of data files to NWS via established ingest capabilities of the National Mesonet Program (NMP) using established World Meteorological file formats and standards.

2.1.5 Provide any necessary maintenance to the sensor and related systems to meet

NWS requirements for quality and availability (defined below).

2.2 Sensor and Data Requirements

2.2.1 Sensors shall conform to the latest industry standards and be newly manufactured at the time of installation, providing observational capabilities in scope with previous NWS partnerships with industry for installation of such instrumentation but absent obsolescence.

2.2.2 Provide full and open disclosure of sensor characteristics (e.g., metadata), data processing, and sampling techniques.

2.2.3 Data format shall be Binary Universal Form for the Representation of

Meteorological Data (BUFR) and include meteorological observational data, relevant header data, geospatial information, and related BUFR fields standard to aircraft-based meteorological observations.

2.3 Geographical and Related Requirements

2.3.1 Aircraft equipped with water vapor sensors shall provide coverage and routes between the West Coast of the continental US and the central tropical Pacific.

2.3.2 Real time communications systems shall facilitate transmission of observational data while en route (at cruise level) over the open ocean, in addition to providing vertical profiles while on ascent and descent near or over land.

2.4 Performance Requirements

2.4.1 The end-to-end demonstration in Requirement 2.1.4 shall demonstrate 24/7 capability with 95% uptime/availability and 5 minute latency between time of observation at aircraft and receipt of the data via established NWS and NMP ingest capabilities.

2.4.2 Data quality and precision/accuracy for measurements and instrumentation shall meet or exceed well-established criteria as defined by the World Meteorological Organization for aircraft-based meteorological observations. These requirements include but are not limited to operating within an altitude range of sea level to 45,000 feet above sea level; a range of atmospheric temperature of -65 C to +50 C; and a range of water vapor content from 50 ppmv to 40,000 ppmv with an accuracy of +/- 50 ppmv.