The operational procedures reside on a front- end workstation and are accessible to the duty meteorologist through an Xwindow menu. It can be executed at any time and the results are usually available between 30 and 60 minutes from the time of notification. In the diagnostic mode, the last seven days of analyzed meteorological fields are always on-line. In the forecast mode, data are available to 72 hours twice a day and to 240 hours once a day. The model was tuned, visual ash cloud criteria were defined and default scenario conditions were established.
Work is currently underway to provide access to the outputs on the Internet.
The model is also executed upon request from the National Meteorological Service of another country. When an eruption occurs, there is little if any information on how much ash is released or the duration of the eruption. This is clearly a problem when having to choose initial conditions describing the eruption in order to run the model. Nonetheless, based on the cases to which CMC has responded, the volcanic ash forecasts are of great use to the aviation community and the meteorologists when used in conjunction with satellite imagery and trajectory forecasts. Since the source strength is usually unknown, predefined default characteristics can be used.