Commercial aircraft sensor data is used to feed numerical weather prediction models
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Official reports and studies confirm that direct measurements and surveillance data collected by commercial aircraft are utilized as valuable inputs and observations to feed numerical weather prediction models.
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PMCID: PMC6169967 PMID: 30281667
Abstract
Wind and temperature data are important parameters in aircraft performance studies. The lack of accurate measurements of these parameters forces researchers to rely on numerical weather prediction models, which are often filtered for a larger area with decreased local accuracy. Aircraft, however, also transmit information related to weather conditions, in response to interrogation by air traffic controller surveillance radars. Although not intended for this purpose, aircraft surveillance data contains information that can be used for weather models. This paper presents a method that can be used to reconstruct a weather field from surveillance data that can be received with a simple 1090 MHz receiver. Throughout the paper, we answer two main research questions: how to accurately infer wind and temperature from aircraft surveillance data, and how to reconstruct a real-time weather grid efficiently. We consider aircraft as moving sensors that measure wind and temperature conditions indirectly at different locations and flight levels. To address the first question, aircraft barometric altitude, ground velocity, and airspeed are decoded from down-linked surveillance data. Then, temperature and wind observations are computed based on aeronautical speed conversion equations. To address the second question, we propose a novel Meteo-Particle (MP) model for constructing the wind and temperature fields. Short-term local prediction is also possible by employing a predictor layer. Using an unseen observation test dataset, we are able to validate that the mean absolute errors of inferred wind and temperature using MP model are 67% and 26% less than using the interpolated model based on GFS reanalysis data. 1 Introduction
Using aircraft as weather sensors is a re
Unlocking a Treasure Trove of Aircraft Data - NOAA Weather Program Office
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Research reveals direct measurements of wind and temperature from aircraft provide the highest valued inputs into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models compared to weather balloon radiosondes, satellites, and ground-based, weather observing stations. However, aircraft data has its shortcomings including data spareness, clustering around major airports, and relatively high latency, which constrains its full potential to benefit the weather enterprise. This project demonstrates a low-cost, innovative system that has the ability to pull meteorological data, including wind and temperature, from aircraft equipped with Mode S Enhanced Surveillance (EHS) transponders in real-time. This
meteorologists. Research and military aircraft, and eventually commercial aircraft too, recorded observations at … had begun to deploy computerized numerical weather prediction models in operational forecasting. Having … race with the Reds” in weather prediction and control.° The key to numerical weather prediction was the electronic
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