Met Office 4D-Trajectory 1.0.0
Current JSON Original JSON

Abstract

The Met Office 4D Trajectory API service supplies global meteorological data for tailored flight trajectory requests, to support flight planning services and software products. The benefits of exploiting 10km resolution meteorological data for flight planning and in-flight decision making include:

  • Save fuel costs
  • Reduce CO2 emissions
  • Improve Flight Management Computer (FMC) calculations to save fuel
  • Supply notifications of weather hazards for situational awareness and improved safety

Trajectory requests allow the user to specify a latitude, longitude, atmospheric height, date/time and weather parameters, to map meteorological data to a flight trajectory. (See API Specification)

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.

Available March 2022.

Service Type
SWIM_COMPLIANT
Lifecycle Stage
OPERATIONAL
Business Activity Type
AIRSPACE_ORGANISATION_AND_MANAGEMENT
Intended Consumer
AERONAUTICAL_INFORMATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Information Exchange Category
AERONAUTICAL_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE
METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE
Application Message Exchange Pattern
SYNCHRONOUS_REQUEST_REPLY
State ICAO Nationality Letters
EGRR
ICAO Region
EUR-NAT
Geospatial Categorisation Description
Global based on gridded data
In-Operation Date
31-Mar-2022
Provider
Met Office

The Met Office is the sole Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) certificated by the UK Civil Aviation Authority to provide and disseminate a range of aviation forecast products and services, in accordance with ICAO Annex 3 to the Chicago Convention, Meteorological Service for international Air Navigation.

ICAO’s Annex 3 provides the main regulatory framework against which the UK is obliged to provide meteorological services, and which the Met Office delivers Met Services against. This ensures that the UK meets its obligations to ICAO to provide safe, efficient and regular air travel.

These services fall into the following main categories:

a) UK services.

b) The World Area Forecast System (WAFS), as provided by World Area Forecast Centre (WAFC) London, in coordination with colleagues in the US.

c) SADIS (Secure Aviation Data Information Service).

d) The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) London.

In addition to the ICAO Annex 3 determined services, a range of discretionary services that are determined as a requirement in the UK are also provided. Specific services such as Aviation R&D and the provision of information to NATS are examples of this.

Provider Type
REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Support

To report incidents on services in operation, contact the 24/7 Weather Desk at enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk or +44 330 135 0000.

Point of Contact
Operational need for 4D-Trajectory

This service provides high resolution 4D-Trajectory meteorological data required by flight planning software companies, whose products are used to optimise flight profiles (saving fuel costs, reducing CO2 emissions, boost effiency and improve safety).

GET 4D-Trajectory

Allow service consumers to requests 4D tractories from two datasets: 'Main' and 'Hazard' aviation data. Main: Wind U and Wind V, Temperature, Relative Humidity. Hazards: Turbulence

OAUTH2 Client Credential / Bearer Token

The access to the service is based on OAUTH2 Client Credentials using Client ID and Secret to retrieve a Bearer Token.

The service adheres to SWIM YP, WS Light implementation, therefore the payload is protected during transfer and all data is protected at rest

Token valid for 1 hour

The access token is valid for one hour, therefore must be regenerated after this has expired.

Check Headers

Header information in the response will include status codes. Headers must always be checked with each request. Setting headers is based on the SWIM Yellow Profile using WS Lite.

Service Level Agreement

4DT DevOps run a 5 minute Canary 24/7. Availability will be calculated and exposed by the 4DT Team and then used to inform an availability target. Currently availability is >99%.

Example response times are <6 seconds per request with a request success rate of approximately 99.937% with an average payload of approximately 30KB.

Availability

99.95 % (measured on Temperature, Wind U and Wind V and Relative Humidity) outside the planned outages Schedule of planned outages

Integrity

Integrity mechanisms have been implemented
 

SELF_VALIDATION
Validation

The service has been validated by numerous test activities including performance, data integrity, penetration and load tests.

SWIM compliance implementation has been tested in accordance with guidance from the SWIM Yellow Profile.

FMC

Flight Management Computer

4DT

Four Dimentional Trajectory

CB

Cumulonimbus Clouds (Convective Storm Clouds)

Information
Aviation Meteorological Trajectory Data

Global meteorological data from the Met Office, processed in order match forecast winds (Wind U and Wind V), temperature, relative humidity, turbulence with trajectory points.

TLS 1.2

The service relies HTTPS over TLS 1.2 to provide integrity and confidentiality.

 

5 Minute Synthetic Canary

A heartbeat service is used to periodically check the status of the service and determine whether it is available. This runs every 5 minutes 24/7 and checks the availability of Temperature/Relative Humidity/Wind U & Wind V.

The Service is monitored and has automated alerts that go to 24/7 Service Desk and DevOps team however no consumer visible monitoring capabilities are provided.
4DT Trajectory Service

Provides access to 4D-Trajectory meteorological data.

PROVIDER_SIDE
SWIM_TI_YP_1_0_WS_LIGHT
IPV4_SECURE_UNICAST
SYNCHRONOUS_REQUEST_RESPONSE
Operations
HTTPS GET

Provides the consumer with Flight Trajectory points for the globe

Idempotent
IDEMPOTENT
Synchronous
SYNCHRONOUS
Precondition
Must be authenticated and authorised
TI Protocol Methods
HTTP GET
Operation Message
HTTP GET
Processing Consideration
Latest available data

SWIM Yellow Profile Compliant WS Lite enables HTTPS GET requests and associated responses. The interface shall return .covjson files.

References
Revision Save Date
Fri, 10/27/2023 - 12:00
Schema version
v0.0.3d