Developments in aviation meteorology

Weather and related environmental phenomena can have a large impact on the aviation industry, and to ensure the safety and regularity of international aviation, weather services for the industry are provided within a framework of standards and recommended practices established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). This is essential to support the safe and efficient operations of aircraft across international boundaries within an increasingly congested airspace and with ongoing economic pressures. These weather services are provided through the operations of two World Area Forecast Centres (WAFCs), a number of Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres and many State-based Meteorological Offices. The two WAFCs routinely produce gridded wind, height, and temperature data for the international aviation industry and these are used in automated flight planning systems to optimize flight routes, reducing flight times and associated costs. They also produce digital weather grids for turbulence, icing, and cumulonimbus allowing airlines to avoid these areas and improve flight safety. Turbulence in particular is a major cause of aviation incidents and the first two papers in this special issue focus on the WAFCs' digital turbulence forecast grids. The first paper, by Gill, describes an objective verification system that has been developed to assess the WAFCs' turbulence products, and provides a framework to assess future developments. The paper demonstrates the value of routine aircraft observations, including appropriate turbulence measures, for verification and improving forecast products. As computing power has increased there has been substantial progress in the development of ensemble Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and assessment of their utility for providing probabilistic forecasts. This is demonstrated by Gill and Buchanan, who apply the objective verification system presented in the first paper to assess global turbulence fields generated from the Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System (MOGREPS). These show improvement in overall skill and forecast value compared to existing deterministic forecasts and offer a way forward for further improvements in the WAFC's turbulence products. Volcanic ash is a hazard to aviation and can cause major disruption to airline operations as demonstrated by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in May 2010 and the resultant cancellation of many flights across Europe. The level of detail required by the aviation industry on the location and forecast movement of volcanic ash is very challenging and requires the integrated use of available observations and dispersion modelling techniques when generating warnings. Satellite data, in particular, enable detection of volcanic ash and retrieval of ash characteristics, which can then constrain model forecasts of ash dispersion. However, the retrieval of ash characteristics is subject to a number of uncertainties and the paper by Mackie et al. explores how the composition of ash can affect this process. Time and space scales for aviation are different to many other areas of meteorology. They cover everything from global to mesoscale and time scales that vary from many hours to just a few seconds. In particular, forecasting in the terminal area presents its own challenges. Isaac et al. describe the Canadian Nowcasting System, together with objective verification at two airports for a range of weather parameters. The relative benefits of the nowcast over the NWP model are demonstrated at shorter lead times, which should help more informed decisions to be made leading to increased safety and improved efficiency. The next group of papers look at the detection and numerical prediction of low altitude wind shear and turbulence around Hong Kong International Airport. Tse et al. present a case study of intense convective weather that led to two missed approaches due to strong tailwind associated with a thunderstorm downdraft. The use of Terminal Doppler Weather Radar to monitor wind conditions is discussed and the benefits of short range forecasting out to an hour ahead in steps of just a few minutes are demonstrated using the Aviation Thunderstorm Nowcasting System. The next paper, by Chan, looks at the applications of minisodars to supplement other observations for detecting low-level wind shear and microbursts illustrated by a few case studies. The next two papers investigate the use of LIDAR for the provision of alerts for terrain induced low altitude turbulence and wind shear on the glide path. In the paper by Hon and Chan, LIDAR is used to derive a value for the Eddy Dissipation Rate with low level wind shear and turbulence alerts being produced from this data and validated against pilot reports. The following paper, by Lee and Chan, looks at the use of a LIDAR-based F-factor for producing alerts for wind shear and these are also validated against pilot reports. The final paper in this group is by Carruthers et al. and presents results of a modelling study of terrain-induced wind shear at Hong Kong International Airport and the potential for simulating the complex flows at Hong Kong International Airport in near real-time and providing appropriate forecasts. The final papers show the vital role that aircraft measurements of atmospheric variables have had in meteorological research for many years. The paper by McBeath summarizes and gives examples of the many areas of research and subsequent improvements with benefits to the aviation industry (contrails, turbulence, convection, volcanic ash), improved understanding of atmospheric processes, calibration of other observing systems and the development of NWP models. In the last paper, Gioli et al. present an example of how aircraft wind measurements have been used to assess a mesoscale model. Long-term aircraft observations of wind at relatively low altitudes over varying and complex terrain are compared with mesoscale model results with the aim of assessing wind potential maps. The utility of the aircraft observations to complement other observations and improve models is demonstrated. The aviation industry is sensitive to weather and this will increase with the expected growth in aviation traffic density, increasing pressure to respond to environmental issues and increasing complexity in air traffic management. These challenges are starting to be addressed through projects such as the American Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR). This special issue presents a collection of papers that demonstrate continuing improvements in aviation meteorology, and we thank the authors for their contributions.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.