ENVISA provides meteorological services and weather data for a wide variety of environmental and transportation studies. We create meteorological scenarios to aid clients in the analysis of aircraft condensation trails (contrails) as well as the study of local air quality and noise around airports. In addition, weather data is produced to assist with air traffic control simulations and forecasts, aircraft performance analyses and wake vortex studies. Meteorological data provided by ENVISA can be produced on a wide range of distance scales (from global climate to local fronts, storms and airport winds) and time scales (from seasonal and monthly to daily or hourly).

ENVISA maintains two state-of-the-art weather forecast models: the Mesoscale Model (MM5), originally developed by Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); and, more recently, the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). Both WRF and MM5 provide operational forecasting models that are flexible and computationally efficient, while offering advances in physics, numerics, and data assimilation contributed by the scientific community.

ENVISA provides the following data tailored to specific modelling requirements and needs:

• gridded meteorological data
• surface observational data from meteorological stations (SYNOP), airport weather data (METAR) and marine ocean reports (BUOY)
• observed upper air data from weather balloons (ROAB)
• meteorological forecasts and historical weather data scenarios
• climate change simulation data sets from long term daily and monthly means

For details on our past and present meteorology activities see the projects below:

Aircraft Condensation Trails Monitoring Service – CONTRAILS (2003-2005)

ENVISA created a computer model to predict condensation trail (contrail) coverage from global aviation for the EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre.
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TEA Contrail Model Validation (2006)

Following the first CONTRAILS project, ENVISA performed a validation study of the EUROCONTROL contrail model in order to determine the extent of possible sources of error or inaccuracy.
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ATM Contrail Mitigation Options Environmental Study (2005)

ENVISA assessed the environmental impact of several ATM options to keep air traffic out of airspace volumes with cold and moist air likely to produce contrails.
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Meteorological Service for the EEC (2003-present)

ENVISA provides EUROCONTROL with continuous weather data and on-going meteorological support.
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