The future of aviation weather forecasting

Perched atop towers and overlooking airfields, air-traffic controllers’ eyes glaze across their screens and the skies, as they orchestrate a symphony of landings and takeoffs to harmoniously ensure the safety of each aircraft and passenger. As they guide airplanes to both the ground and the air, rolling thunderstorms engulf the sunny, cloudless skies and unleash torrential downpours that scrub the flight plans of pilots, while soaking the schedules of frustrated passengers for the rest of the day.  

In seconds, the controllers reroute aircraft around the storms, trying to minimize the weather’s impact, but delays inevitably build and force controllers to stay well into the night to accommodate the additional air traffic pushed through overburdened airways to relieve the hardest hit regions.  

{mosads}Make no mistake, these air-traffic controllers are equipped with highly trained eyes to decipher air traffic as complex as the weather forecasts they read to determine when a storm might clear. But, they’re not professionally trained meteorologists who can predict weather patterns. They need new technology that not only makes it easier for them to understand and deliver weather forecasts, but also facilitates an understanding of how one weather pattern relates to another and what that means for a given flight path.  

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), bad weather accounts for 70 percent of all traffic delays within the U.S. National Airspace System, which equals about $6.7 billion a year in passenger costs. Annually, delayed flights cost $40 billion, according to an estimate from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. That spending also adds up to lost time; in 2013, the airline industry saw 12,212,285 minutes of weather-related delays.  

The current landscape for weather forecasting and product generation for aviation is scattered across various complex weather systems that ingest and display a myriad of data to air-traffic controllers and planners. Given that 66 percent of delays are preventable with this data and enhanced air-traffic-management-decision support tools, it’s critical that air-traffic personnel work with the most accurate and timely weather information possible. As the FAA recognized years ago, the weather needs for aviation are much different than those for general meteorology. The FAA needs specific types of weather data and modeling capabilities that show whether or not any given airspace is safe for travel.   

With airspace expected to become even more clogged in the next decade, improvements and efficiencies in the management and monitoring of aviation weather data are absolutely critical.  

Weather technology is rapidly evolving and driving an unprecedented need for consolidated weather processing systems that house modernized weather and computer technology. Air-traffic controllers need tools to make it easier and quicker to process, analyze and distribute highly accurate, aviation-specific weather data that is produced by the world’s most sophisticated and complex meteorological algorithms.  

Imagine a situation where thousands of simultaneous algorithms processes gigabytes of data streaming over interconnected networks and flowing into astute algorithms tuned for real world weather applications, high performance computing humming in remote server rooms 24/7/365 with redundancy, and real-time display of the output across hundreds of systems. This orchestrated concert of events produces the most accurate aviation weather products on the planet – this is the FAA’s NextGen Weather Processor. 

In the years ahead, aviation weather forecasting will include:

·        Increasing timeframes of weather predictability: These would provide up to eight hours’ notice of a flight-jeopardizing weather system, buying controllers, planners and airlines much-needed time to reroute and reschedule traffic accordingly. For example, an Atlanta-bound flight leaving from Boston might now sit on the tarmac for hours if there’s a storm over the mid-Atlantic; however, an eight-hour weather warning allows all stakeholders to work together to find a new flight path and get the plane out on schedule.

·        Creating more confident and accurate forecasts: As of now, the source of weather information has literally been all over the map. Environmental satellites streaming data from hundreds of miles above Earth, dozens of ground radars, sensors mounted on the sides of hundreds of commercial aircraft, lightning observations and statistical forecast models all feed the aviation weather picture. Creating a common weather processing and display platform – with algorithms to make sense of vast amounts of weather data – that’s flexible enough to host new scientific breakthroughs in forecasting is paramount.

·        Providing safer and efficient travel for passengers: The flying public will experience fewer flight delays and cancellations and an overall improvement in the dependability of flight schedules. Aircraft will not idle as much on tarmacs and be able to arrive at their destinations in the quickest amount of time possible, resulting in both fueling savings and environmental benefits.   

Weather impacts every phase of flight, not just takeoff and landing, so it’s imperative to have modernized weather sensors, processing and integrated decision support systems in place that will benefit both the airspace, all segments of flight, air-traffic controllers, planners, airlines and, of course, passengers. The future of aviation weather forecasting is clear for takeoff.

Spencer is a manager of Raytheon’s Air Traffic Systems.