QVAC Probabilistic Gridded Data 1.0.0
Current JSON Original JSON

Abstract

Access the QVACIS for METEO FRANCE's area of responsibility as a NWSP, ANSP, ROC, VAAC and TCAC.

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The Quantitative Volcanic Ash Concentration Information product provides a forecast of significant ash cloud(s) that poses a widespread impact to aircraft operations and air navigation, in area of responsibility of METEO FRANCE as a VAAC, as well as London VAAC’s area of responsibility, as back-up during outages.

The QVACI is provided per volcano in the form of a high-resolution four-dimensional representation of a volcanic ash cloud based on 3-hourly timesteps, from 0 to +24h. It provides the gridded probabilistic forecast of significant volcanic ash cloud showing the probability of exceeding four concentration thresholds (0.2mg/m3, 2mg/m3, 5mg/m3 and 10mg/m3)

QVAC provides relevant information for use in operator’s flight planning and decision support systems allowing, e.g., more efficient routes in accordance with their safety management programme during significant volcanic ash cloud events.

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Retrieval of information and data : 

  • When an event occurs (subscription) via AMQP 1.0 whereby the message contains a notification.
  • Request/Reply using a WCS whereby a NetCDF file contains the data.
Service Type
SWIM_COMPLIANT
Life Cycle
PROSPECTIVE
Business Activity Type
AERODROME_OPERATION
AIRSPACE_ORGANISATION_AND_MANAGEMENT
AIRSPACE_USER_OPERATIONS
INFORMATION_MANAGEMENT
SERVICE_DELIVERY_MANAGEMENT
TRAFFIC_SYNCHRONISATION
Intended Consumer
AERONAUTICAL_INFORMATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER
AIR_TRAFFIC_SERVICE_PROVIDER
CIVIL_AIR_NAVIGATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER
CIVIL_AIRSPACE_USER
NETWORK_MANAGER
PROVIDER_OF_DATA_SERVICES
REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Information Exchange Category
METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE
Application Message Exchange Pattern Entity
PUBLISH_SUBSCRIBE
State ICAO Nationality Letters
LF
ICAO Region
EUR
Geospatial Categorisation Description
The dataset corresponds to METEO FRANCE's area of responsibility as a NWSP, ANSP, ROC, VAAC and TCAC.
In-Operation Date
16-Nov-2025
Provider
METEO-FRANCE

METEO FRANCE is the French national meteorological service provider, an ISO 9001 certified public sector body.

METEO FRANCE has been designated by executive order as the exclusive Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) for meteorological services over the French national territory, including overseas, in accordance with Annex 3 of the Chicago Convention (ICAO) and the Single European Sky EU regulations.

In this context, METEO FRANCE’s main goals are:

  • To produce and provide a wide range of aeronautical products and services, in compliance with its obligations as an ANSP in France, Regional OPMET Center (ROC) in Europe, Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) over Europe, Africa, Asia and Tropical Cyclone Advisory Center (TCAC) over the West Indian Ocean.
  • To integrate meteorological innovation to improve safety and regularity of «En-route» traffic
  • To develop decision-making tools on major hubs, such as Collaborative Decision Making.

METEO FRANCE operates a 24/24 7/7 service to air navigation by providing legacy products as well as innovative MET solutions to the aviation community at local, regional and global scales.

To support this service, METEO FRANCE runs an ambitious and wide-ranging R&D program driven by aviation meteorology applications (e.g. nowcasting, numerical weather prediction systems including ensemble prediction system, information systems), and studies climate change and its foreseeable impacts.

The overall goal is to improve air transportation in terms of safety, efficiency and environmental and climatic impact.

METEO FRANCE has been and still is involved in a number of international and European projects (e.g. SESAR projects) and has regular exchanges with other MET ANSP at European and international levels. METEO FRANCE will continue to contribute to the definition and subsequent implementation of new services currently under discussion such as the Aerodrome Meteorological Observational Information Service (AMOIS), the Aerodrome Meteorological Forecast Information Service (AMFIS) or the Hazardous Weather Information Service (HWIS),.

In addition, METEO FRANCE is highly involved in research work aimed at making progress on the key aeronautical parameters derived from numerical weather prediction, mainly in nowcasting.

Provider Type
REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Point of Contact
Operational needs for METEO FRANCE as NWSP and ANSP

The service is provided in accordance with ICAO Annex 3, Meteorological Service for International Air Navigation, and the PANS-MET, Procedures for Air Navigation Services, Meteorology, Doc 10157, from November 2025, as well as regulation 2021/116 (CP1), AF 5 System Wide Information Management and regulation 373/2017 annex V.

Data Distribution

The consumer gets the product for METEO FRANCE's area of responsibility as a NWSP, ANSP, ROC, VAAC and TCAC.

Information Retainment

According to ICAO Annex 3 the meteorological information is retained for a period of at least 30 days from the date of issue. This relates to the information itself and not the request time of the customer.

Subscription

Consumers needs to contact METEO FRANCE to register administratively to METGATE_MF.

Encryption

SSL Encryption is in effect for AMQPS and HTTPS services.

Signature

The requested information may contain a signature using SHA256.

Capacity

Best effort - metrics to be implemented by 2025-11-16.

Availability

Best effort - metrics to be implemented by 2025-11-16.

Confidentiality

This service is part of the standard METEO FRANCE secured infrastructure which is ANSSI compliant.

Integrity

This service is part of the standard METEO FRANCE secured infrastructure which is ANSSI compliant.

AIRM

ATM Information Reference Model

AMQP

Advanced Queueing Message Protocol

AMQPS

Advanced Queueing Message Protocol Secured

ANSSI

Agence Nationale de la Securite des Systemes d'Information

API

Application Program Interface

ATC

Air Traffic Control

ATM

Air Traffic Management

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

ICAO

International Civil Aviation Organization

IER

Information Exchange Requirement

IR

Implementation Rules

ISRM

Information Service Reference Model

IWXXM

ICAO Meteorological Information Exchange Model

JWT

JSON Web Token

NWSP

National Weather Service Provider

OGC

Open Geospatial Consortium

OPMET

OPerational METeorological information

ROC

Regional OPMET Center

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer

SWIM

System Wide Information Management

TCAC

Tropical Cyclone Advisory Center

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

VAAC

Volcanic Ash Advisory Center

WFS

Web Feature Service

WCS

Web Coverage Service

WMO

World Meteorological Organization

XML

eXtensible Markup Language

Information
The service provides information for METEO FRANCE's area of responsibility as a NWSP, ANSP, ROC, VAAC and TCAC.
User AMQP Client

The consumer side needs to have a working AMQP1.0 client to receive the requested information.

Nominal behaviour

The service responds with a 200 OK HTTP request along with the payload requested

WCS Request

The interface is used to receive the data via WCS.

PROVIDER_SIDE
SYNCHRONOUS_REQUEST_RESPONSE
Operations
WS Light

The Service Interface Binding is SWIM Yellow Profile Compliant

IPV4_SECURE_UNICAST

The Service implementation conforms with IPV4_SECURE_UNICAST as part of SWIM Yellow Profile requirements.

AMQP Push Service

The interface is used to receive the data which are subscribed to.

PROVIDER_SIDE
FIRE_AND_FORGET
Operations
dataDelivery

The requested information is contained directly in the AMQP message.

Idempotent
NON_IDEMPOTENT
Operation Message
getData
AMQP Services

This is the connection between the service provider and the customer via AMQP1.0 to receive notification related to the customer's subscription.

Url

amqps://metgate-mf-amqp.meteo.fr:5671/metgate

References
WCS

OGC Web Coverage Service

AMQP

Advanced Message Queuing Protocol

Revision Save Date
Fri, 07/11/2025 - 11:24
Schema version
v2