4D-Trajectory API (4DT)

The Met Office 4 Dimensional Trajectory API  (application programming interface) service comprises of an API which provides access to forecast data for a variety of aviation-relevant weather parameters.

The data available can be used for flight planning, route optimisation and hazard management, and can be uplinked onto on-board flight management systems, and ground-based support and decision tools. Taking a slice of the data via an API trajectory is much quicker to transfer and can be used in a more agile way to suit users’ needs.

WAFS resolution 140k

4DT High Resolution Data

 

The benefits of exploiting 10km resolution meteorological data for flight planning and in-flight decision making include:

• Increased flight efficiency using favourable wind data resulting in fuel saving.
• Increased environmental sustainability of aviation operations due to CO2 reduction.
• Improved Flight Management Computer (FMC) calculation to save fuel.
• Supplied notifications of weather hazards for situational awareness and improved safety.

When using 4DT you can benefit from not needing to interrogate an entire global model data set which you might hold locally. instead, you can access the high-resolution data that you desire in an agile way and as frequently as you need. Trajectory requests allow you to specify a latitude, longitude, atmospheric height, date/time and weather parameters, to map meteorological data to a flight trajectory.

Turbulence/Wind examples

The data available comes from the Met Office Global Model, which has a horizontal resolution of ~10km, one-hourly timesteps, and covers the whole globe. Data is valid between T=0 and T=+36hrs. It is available in CovJSON format. Two API’s are available to supply the following weather parameters:

• The 'MAIN' dataset includes our core weather parameters for aviation operations (winds,  temperature, relative humidity).
• The 'HAZARDS' dataset includes turbulence severity.
  • Icing and CB Cloud Base/Top Height could be made available in due course.
  • Convection data is currently available in 17km resolution.  Please note that the Met Office is currently undertaking validation work to supply 10km resolution CB data.

This API service conforms to the Open Geospatial Consortium Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) Specification, delivering data in coverage JSON format.  SWIM compliant API providing High Resolution data for user defined flight paths