European Collaborative Convection Forecast for Air Traffic Management - Experiences from Croatian MET Provider

The Cross-Border Convective Forecast (CBCF) is a collaborative forecast that provides the Network Manager (NM) at EUROCONTROL and participating air navigation services a forecast of convective weather across European Airspace. Eurocontrol, as a primary user, uses this information to coordinate with impacted Air Traffic Control Centres (ACCs) across Europe and implement mitigation measures to minimise flight delays and improve aircraft safety. Currently, Eumetnet established CBCF as a module within the Aviation Support Program. 

The user-oriented forecast started in 2018 and is still developing. Since 2020, aviation weather forecasters of all services who participate simultaneously produce the forecast on a collaborative web tool. From 2022, 24 organisations are participating - from Portugal and Ireland up to Poland and Greece. The number of forecasters included in production of forecast during a year is more than 200, which is probably unique worldwide. To ease dissemination of the product, the lead forecaster coordinates the final product and issues and communicates with the user.

CBCF is a probabilistic forecast of polygons in the domain in 3-hour periods for tomorrow and the current day.  Local meteorological service providers create polygons for their area of responsibility, harmonised across state borders. The risk matrix is a function of the likelihood and extent/severity of convective weather with additional CB-top height information. 

Looking at the European domain, Croatia and its neighbouring area have frequent thunderstorm activity. In a presentation, we will share experiences from a forecaster's perspective in Croatia. The product is easy to produce, fast, and flexible for editing, and the chat is easy to use. Despite the country's unique shape, collaboration and coordination with neighbours are mostly very positive.