The Advanced Satellite Aviation weather Products (ASAP) initiative represents a collaboration between NASA, the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program (AWRP) Product Development Teams (PDTs), the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH), and University of Wisconsin – CIMSS. The goals of the initiative are to test and evaluate existing satellite algorithms that have been developed or are proposed by AWRP team members, introduce new techniques and data sets to the PDTs from the satellite community, and facilitate PDT access to satellite data sets for research and development available through UW-CIMSS and UAH. The project mission is to increase and optimize the use of satellite data sets within the existing PDT structure and to transfer satellite expertise to the PDTs. New satellite products or data sets will be integrated into the PDTs' suite of weather products and undergo the normal FAA procedures for testing and transition to operational use. Current research utilizes satellite technology from instruments such as GOES, MODIS, AIRS, and AVHRR. Future work will focus on exploiting the dramatic improvements in remote sensing capability that will be possible with hyperspectral sounding and imaging instruments.

Research areas important to the aviation community that are addressed by the ASAP initiative include convective storm initiation and convectively-induced turbulence, flight-level winds and wind shear for clear-air turbulence assessment, cloud property assessment (i.e. cloud presence, cloud type, cloud microphysical phase, and cloud top/base height), and volcanic ash detection and monitoring.