WELCOME to the AVIATION simulator
GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
Welcome to the weather simulator made for aviation forecasters by Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre (LEGMC). This edition is slightly adjusted for the EUMeTrain portal users.
The situation played out in the simulation is based on a real case in spring and real data is used in the sim.
This simulator consists of 3 parts
Briefing: Introduction and data description
Simulation: Preparing and issuing forecasts and warnings (~ 60-70 minutes)
Debriefing: Synoptic situation and discussion (10-15 minutes)
STORY: You are an aviation forecaster working a night shift in LEGMC. You will have to do certain tasks - preparing forecasts and issuing warnings for the territory of Latvia and Riga airport.
DATA AVAILABLE: You will see a clock on the upper left corner. It will move 6 times faster than the regular one, so within 70 minutes you will be able to experience close to full 8 hour shift. 1 hour in simulator is approx. 10 minutes in real life. All the data is available in UTC time, so no conversion in time zones is needed.
Most of the data will be available in the upper toolbar.
You will have time at the beginning of the simulator to get familiar with the weather simulator and all the data and tools that are available for you.
All the data will be visible in the middle screen of the simulator. On some of the data (sounding data and frontal analysis) you will be able to click and see zoomed versions of the images.
On the left sidebar below the clock you will see more basic information and different tasks and tools. One of them is TafEditor - a window made as an alternative to the real TafEditor.
You will have to use it to write and issue forecasts and warning. After sending them, there will be a .txt document available for you to open.
Right above the TafEditor there is a Tasks section, where you will find the information on the tasks that needs to be done in a certain time frame.
The button will light up in orange, if there will be new tasks given to you!
METAR information will be available in the lower part of the left sidebar. It will light up in yellow, that means that there is a new metar available that will be visible after pressing REFRESH METAR button.
For the full data description head to the Data Description page by clicking here.
Weather Briefing begins...
Good evening forecaster!
The current time is 02:00 UTC. This will be a short briefing to inform you about the weather situation over the Baltic States. Feel free to write on paper while doing the simulator.
There is a large area of low pressure with a centre over Poland. A trough of low is stretching across the Baltic Sea as well as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
A wide cloud and precipitation zone are located over western part of Latvia as seen in the radar and satellite images. A trough of low at the surface can be seen from the METAR observations across the central and northern part of Europe.
You will have time to get familiar with the simulator as well as with the weather situation.
Technical details:
To control the animations (play, stop, previous, next, etc.) use the buttons above the images:
or 
Recommendations for better experience during the simulation and known bugs:
Recommendations
- Use Firefox (not mandatory, but recommended)
- Do NOT click F5 or hit the 'Refresh' button in the web browser as the simulator will start from the beginning
Known bugs
- When the clock strikes full hour and your image queue doesn't refresh (you don't get new data) click again on that specific data or click on something else and then again on your desired data
- When trying to access specific material and the button seems as not working, click again on that specific data or click on something else and then again on your desired data
- (When using Chrome and when in the main simulator window) When the shift ends you have to click multiple times on 'OK' button on top of the screen to be transferred to the Conclusion / Summary page