Method and apparatus for providing weather and other hazard information to aircraft inflight

A method for generating weather hazard identification for transmission to an aircraft in flight, comprising:

• accessing, by a processor, real-time and forecast meteorological condition data in image form from a first plurality of data sources;
• accessing, by the processor, aircraft flight following data from a second plurality of data sources;
• identifying, by the processor, areas of hazard conditions in the collected meteorological condition data;
• applying, by the processor, a first image processing technique to represent the identified areas of hazard conditions as first image data comprising a plurality of geographically-referenced polygons;
• identifying, by the processor, an aircraft to receive image data regarding the identified areas of hazard conditions;
• accessing, by the processor, aircraft flight following data for the identified aircraft;
• limiting, by the processor, the first image data comprising the plurality of geographically-referenced polygons to a subset of the polygons representing the identified areas of hazard conditions within a pre-determined range of a position of the aircraft according to the flight following data for the identified aircraft to obtain second image data;
• transmitting the second image data to the identified aircraft for direct integration as an image presentation on an image display in a cockpit of the identified aircraft;
• appending, by the processor, metadata to at least some of the plurality of polygons to provide additional information regarding at least one of the identified areas of hazard conditions, the metadata specifying at least one of (1) a parameter of a meteorological condition in the at least one of the identified areas of hazard conditions and (2) a recommended action to be taken in avoiding the at least one of the identified areas of hazard conditions, wherein the metadata is presented as text, the metadata being presented as text includes avoidance rules for the hazard condition, valid times for avoidance of the hazard condition, and forecasted movement of the hazard condition, the forecasted movement including direction and speed.