Contact: Barbara McGehan                FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                        9/26/97

United Parcel Service will soon be delivering more than just packages--it will be delivering weather data to scientists at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A weather probe will be mounted on UPS aircraft to collect important water vapor data that will help improve aviation forecasting and weather and climate modeling.

At the present time, water vapor measurements are taken every 12-hours when weather balloons are released by NOAA's National Weather Service. This is not frequent enough to catch the rapid changes in winds, temperature and water vapor that can occur in a 12-hour period. Because balloons are launched at about 70 sites around the United States, the data collection points are also too spread out to pick up on the small storms that suddenly develop. Images and data from satellite sensors can provide additional information, but these systems are designed to observe horizontal rather than vertical patterns.

According to Rex Fleming of NOAA's Environmental Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., water vapor is extremely difficult to forecast. "We just don't have a mechanism to collect water vapor data frequently enough. Putting these probes on UPS, and eventually other planes, will help us enormously by providing an easy tool to collect data frequently from many parts of the country. This information will then be included in our weather and climate models," he said.

Water vapor plays an important role in storms, particularly the small storms that develop quickly and play havoc with airline schedules and safety. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suggests that these storms can cost the aviation industry more than $1 billion per year. A major factor in these storms is water vapor. Fleming says on the average, more water, in the form of water vapor and clouds, flows over the dry state of Arizona than flows down the Mississippi River. Including more measurements of water vapor in weather forecast models can help forecasters produce a more accurate and precise forecast.

The instrument collecting this data, a Water Vapor Sensing System probe, was built by B. F. Goodrich Rosemount Aerospace, Inc., a sub-contractor to Lockheed Martin. It will be mounted on the left side of the UPS B-757, while a compartment containing the electronics will be housed under the skin of the aircraft. There is an existing temperature probe on the right side of the plane, with future plans to combine these instruments into one probe. The WVSS data will eventually be added to the radars and automated surface systems in air terminals, contributing to a reduction in the frequency and severity of flight delays and improving the safety of air travel.

Data from the UPS planes will also assist climate researchers by providing more accurate water vapor information to be included in climate research and modeling. The information gathered by these aircraft will be used by scientists involved in the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Continental-scale International Project (GCIP), a research effort to improve the ability to model global precipitation and evaporation.

"Commercial aircraft can play a leading role in atmospheric observations by filling the gap that presently exists between information gathered from balloons every 12-hours and from satellite observations. The information gathered by UPS aircraft will give us a better idea of the vertical structure of water vapor in the atmosphere," Fleming said.

Using aircraft to take atmospheric measurements is not a new concept. Currently, many airlines and other commercial companies take measurements of temperature and winds and relay the information through the Aeronautical Radio, Inc. system to a variety of users, including NOAA. The number of reports received each day by NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory in Boulder, is now more than 40,000. This information is entered into a three-hour analysis and forecast model developed at the laboratory and is then run operationally at the National Weather Services' National Centers for Environmental Prediction. Adding water vapor data to this stream of information is the next step in making the model more accurate. Future plans call for 150-160 commercial aircraft to be equipped with the Water Vapor Sensing probe, as part of a two-year demonstration program.

Funding for the project was provided by the FAA's Aviation Weather Research Program and by NOAA's Office of Global Programs.