METEOROLOGY (MET) PANEL (METP) MET OPERATIONS GROUP (WG-MOG) INTERNATIONAL AIRWAYS VOLCANIC WATCH WORK STREAM

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1 International Civil Aviation Organization METP-WG/MOG /VA IP/5 24/10/18 INFORMATION PAPER METEOROLOGY (MET) PANEL (METP) MET OPERATIONS GROUP (WG-MOG) INTERNATIONAL AIRWAYS VOLCANIC WATCH WORK STREAM EIGHTH MEETING Wellington, New Zealand, November 2018 Agenda Item 6 : 6.1: VAAC Management Reports VAAC Toulouse Activity Report (Presented by VAAC Toulouse) SUMMARY This paper presents the VAAC Toulouse IAVW Management Report covering the period since the previous METP WG/MISD VASD meeting and addressing the main features of the IAVW operations, highlighting any recent developments, difficulties and future planned developments. Action by the METP is in paragraph INTRODUCTION 1.1 The area of responsibility of VAAC (Volcanic Ash Advisory Center) Toulouse covers more than 180 Flight Information Regions (FIR) over three continents and five different Air Navigation Regions (EUR, NAT, MID, AFI, ASIA). VAAC Toulouse has common borders with six other VAACs in both hemispheres (Buenos Aires, Darwin, London, Montreal, Tokyo and Washington). 1.2 VAAC Toulouse is operated in the Meteo-France National Forecast Center in Toulouse by the Aviation Department of the central office of the Meteorological Services. Nineteen forecasters trained in aviation meteorology work on three positions including the Met Watch Office activity for the five European continental French FIRs, the SIGWX charts production and the VAAC position. (5pages) METP/WG-MOG VA IP/4

2 2. VAAC OPERATIONS 2.1 Issuance of operational Volcanic Ash Advisories (VAA) Seven (7) operational VAAs/VAGs (Volcanic Ash Advisories/Volcanic Ash Graphics) were issued by VAAC Toulouse for real events from the 1 st of July 2017 to the 30 th of September 2018: - 4 VAAs/VAGs for Le Piton de la Fournaise (La Réunion, France) ; - 3 VAAs/VAGs for Mt Etna (Italy). 2.2 Issuance of Exercise Volcanic Ash Advisories In addition, during the same period, seventeen (17) Exercise VAAs/VAGs were issued: - 3 VAAs/VAGs for Campi Flegrei (Italy) (VOLCITA17-01 Exercise) - 1 VAA/VAG for Mt Agua de Pau (Azores, Portugal) (VOLCAZO17-02 Exercise) - 4 VAAs/VAGs for Mt Agua de Pau (Azores, Portugal) (VOLCEX17-01 Exercise) - 2 VAAs/VAGs for Mt Terceira (Azores, Portugal) (VOLCAZO18-01 Exercise) - 3 VAAs/VAGs for Mt Katla (Island) (back-up Exercises with VAAC London) - 2 VAAs/VAGs for Unknown (EUR Data Management Group monitoring) - 1 VAA for Unknown (AFI SIGMET routine test) - 1 VAA for Unknown (ASIA SIGMET routine test) 2.3 Significant eruptions in the VAAC area None 2.4 Key Performance Indicators (KPI) related to VAAs/VAGs One outcome of the most recent VAAC Best Practice and Met Operations Group (MOG) meetings (Tokyo, 5-9 June 2017 and June 2017 respectively) was a commitment, from 1st January 2018, for all VAACs to adhere to certain KPIs relating to the issuance of VAG and VAA products, as follows: i) Following the collection of sufficient evidence of volcanic ash in the atmosphere within a VAAC s Area of Responsibility, the Initial VAG/VAA product should be issued within 20 minutes on 95% of occasions. ii) Following the collection of sufficient evidence of volcanic ash in the atmosphere within a VAAC s Area of Responsibility, the first forecast VAG/VAA product should be issued within 75 minutes on 95% of occasions. Based on the VA exercises conducted at Toulouse VAAC since 1st January 2018 the following statistics can be compiled: - Initial VAG/VAA product issued within 20 minutes of notification on 67% of occasions.

3 - First forecast VAG/VAA product issued within 75 minutes of notification on 100% of occasions. The results as shown above are skewed significantly by the fact that there is only a small sample size 3 members because there were exceptionally very few real responses required during the period. Thus a 2 min delay encountered in one of the exercises has strongly impacted statistics. 2.5 Forecasters training The training protocol is reviewed yearly and published on the quality documents management website. Each forecaster has the obligation to realize two training sessions a year, at the minimum, in addition to the participation to the multiple exercises. A duplicated set of the operational tools are available for these trainings The training protocol requires running the different models of volcanic ash trajectory and dispersion with a given scenario. Models outputs are then analyzed to produce and publish on an internal website (mirror of the official VAAC webpage) VAGs, VAAs as well as concentrations charts, in compliance with the ICAO EUR/NAT Contingency Plan for Volcanic Ash. 2.6 Significant operational or technical changes Production of VAG and VAA is now possible with the new visualisation software of Météo-France (SYNOPSIS). This software developed at Meteo-France is more user-friendly The horizontal resolution of the MOCAGE ACCIDENT model used to forecast volcanic ash dispersion has been increased to 0.1 (instead of 0.5 ) in the inner regional domain (60 x 60 ). This increase has considerably enhanced the description of the eruptive source term in the model The VAAC Toulouse website has been re-designed to improve ergonomics and propose an access to an archive of any VAA/VAG issued by the VAAC from Volcanic ash concentration charts, satellite views with forecasters annotation (to assess the observation confidence) may be posted in real time on the web site. This new website will open to users by the end of Observation data from the six Meteo-France aerosols LIDARs is now operationally used by the VAAC Toulouse, for volcanic ash monitoring from surface up to FL450. In addition, LIDAR data is steadily used for aviation weather forecast (bottom of clouds layers identification and sand dust or fire smoke monitoring) Accordingly to IAVW (International Airways Volcano Watch), future volcanic ash cloud-related information should be provided in a digital format that can be fully integrated into flight planning and other operational systems in order to better serve aviation users and decision makers. With respect to IAVW roadmap, VAAs issued by VAAC Toulouse were made available from January 2018 in digital format (transcoding) based on the ICAO Meteorological Information Exchange Model (IWXXM) scheme. VAA production by VAAC Toulouse in native xml should be effective before the first quarter of 2019.

4 2.7 VAAC International Exercises Four exercises (one VOLCEX, one VOLCITA and two VOLCAZO) were realized in VAAC Toulouse was responsible of the VAAC production for the last VOLCEX17 exercise (29 th -30 th November 2017) about an eruption in the Azores. Regulatory VAAs/VAGs and additional concentration charts were produced On the day before VOLCEX17, a VOLCAZO exercise was carried out, involving only Portugal and France A second bilateral exercise VOLCAZO was run on the 28 th of June A bilateral Exercise VOLCITA was run with Italy on the 10 th of October It was the opportunity to enlarge the exercise to the second volcano observatory INGV OV (National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Vesuvius Observatory) designated by EUR Air Navigation Plan in Italy A bilateral exercise VOLCITA18 is planned with ENAV (Civil Aviation Authorities) and ENAC (Air Navigation Service Provider) on the 23 rd of October VAAC Back-up VAAC London and VAAC Toulouse are mutual back-ups A back-up exercise was performed on the 17 th of April A complete set of VAA/VAG and concentrations charts were issued both by London backing-up Toulouse (fake eruption of Mt Etna) and then by Toulouse backing-up London (simulated eruption of Mt Katla) on the same day. A new back-up exercise is planned on the 16 th of October In March 2018, a co-ordination meeting took place in Exeter between representatives of VAAC Toulouse and VAAC London. One of the objectives was to work towards an enhancement of the consistency between respective VA concentration charts produced by both VAACs. 3. FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS 3.1 Collaborative project with CTBTO A three-part collaboration is ongoing between VAAC Toulouse, CTBTO/IMS (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation/International Monitoring System) and the French AEC (Atomic Energy Commissariat). Observations of infrasound waves detected by the CTBTO global observation network are collected and stored in the CTBTO International Data Centre (IDC). In the frame of the European projects ARISE ( ) and ARISE2 ( ), an objective of this collaboration is to establish correlations between these infra-sound data and the explosive activity of some volcanoes chosen in Europe and Africa. Two applications have been investigated for the VAAC purposes: - in the far field (>500 km), for early detection of eruptive activity and possible ash emission by explosive volcanoes poorly instrumented ;

5 - in the close field (<500 km), to enrich the description of the kinetic of the eruption and of the volcanic ash release. Work is ongoing to consolidate the results on a larger amount of past eruptions. Furthermore, a prototype of bulletin has been designed for the VAAC Toulouse notification in the case of an explosive eruption within its responsibility area. 3.2 Improvements in the numerical dispersion model Developments are currently undertaken in the MOCAGE Accident dispersion model to allow: - the assimilation of satellite and LIDARs observations of volcanic ash and sulphur dioxide (target 2021); - a better description of the source term with the possibility to modify the kinetic profile and/or the vertical distribution of the eruptive source in the model (target 2019).The FPLUME (Folch et al, 2016) module, a 1D emission scheme that includes microphysical processes such as wet aggregation, is under testing. - modelling and source estimation of SO2 plumes. Assimilation of SO2 columns from various satellites is being developed. 4. ACTION BY THE WORK STREAM 4.1 The METP MISD/VASD Work Stream is invited to note the information presented in this paper. END