Metro-02
Meteorology and Flight Planning
1.
Beginning July 1, 1996, at 0800 UTC, the United
States converted airport surface observations (SAs
and SPs) and airport terminal weather forecasts to
the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
formats
a.
The surface observations and terminal forecast
formats and coding changed
b.
Other weather products such as winds aloft
(FD), area forecasts (FA), and pilot reports
(PIREPs) changed little except to incorporate
the new weather coding and station identifiers
2.
The hourly surface observations (SA) are referred to
as METAR (Aviation Routine Weather Report), and
the airport terminal forecast are referred to as TAF
(Aerodrome Forecast). Pilots will notice some
differences in the sequence in which information is
presented, formatted (e.g., winds and cloud cover),
and the abbreviations used
3.
With a little practice, pilots will find it easy to
understand the new code and will find the additional
information in the forecasts (TAF) very useful
a.
Those who use DUATs (Direct User Access
Terminal) or commercially provided weather
services will find that all have included a plain
language interpreter just as before
b.
In flight service briefings, the sequence of
information may be different, and the
temperature and dew point will be in degrees
Celsius
NOTE: When METAR data is missing from the
body of the report (e.g., dew point), it is simply
omitted; the user must know the sequence to
recognize this. Some exceptions apply in remarks
such as RVRNO, or SLPNO, when RVR or SLP are
normally reported but not currently available.
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