Military weather forecasting tasks are becoming more difficult because of the increasing sophistication and weather sensitivity of modern weapon systems, and the large (and increasing) volumes of meteorological data now available to the forecasters for their analysis, especially during periods of bad weather when the demands on the humans in the loop are at a maximum. This is exacerbated by the future prospect of a decrease in the pool of qualified personnel brought about by force reductions. Furthermore, as the weapons become more complex and tactical choices multiply, the operational decision-makers will find it more difficult to deal with the increasing variety of meteorological input data that they must consider in selecting the optimum combination of weapons and tactics. In response to these challenges, the rapid growth of computational speed and memory available at a reasonable cost and in smaller physical volume, makes it possible to envision higher levels of automated data fusion and advanced visualization schemes to accomplish two objectives: (1) Reduce the amount of human intervention required for data fusion while increasing the quality of weather support; (2) Improve the speed and effectiveness of the communication of significant weather information to both the forecasters and their operational users through the use of advanced visualization techniques. We propose to evaluate, select and develop advanced and innovative techniques for data fusion and visualization in order to develop a Meteorlogical Visualization Environment (MVE). The proposed MVE will provide Navy meteorologists with visualization tools necessary to efficiently produce timely, highly accurate tactical weather predictions tailored, simultaneously, for a wide variety of specialized users.
