Mercury Application: Helping SWPC Issue Space Weather Advisories for the International Civil Aviation Organization

In 2019, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) began a project with the goal of issuing space weather advisories for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). SWPC would be one of several centers around the world to take part in this effort. The advisories would require space weather forecasters to monitor a variety of scientific products and issue specific messages for different regions of the globe.

A central component of the new ICAO responsibility would be a software tool capable of both viewing products and creating advisories quickly. Without this, forecasters would have to manually create advisory messages which could be time consuming and error-prone. In just a few months, SWPC's Development and Transition Section (DTS) developed a new software suite capable of this functionality called Mercury.

The Mercury application is capable of displaying model animations in a display for forecasters to easily view. Once a decision has been made to make an advisory, a specific region of the globe on the animation can be highlighted and changed into geographic coordinates. The advisory can be tailored further by a forecaster before being issued out globally. This significant project was made possible by software developers, scientists, and forecasters working together closely in a short amount of time to provide an important service to the international aviation community.