Understanding Aviation Meteorology and Weather Hazards with Ground-Based Observations

Meteorology is no doubt important for aviation, as weather hazards have a significant negative impact on aircraft safety and traffic delay. Based on recent surveys, 20–30% of worldwide air accidents and as much as 22% of air traffic delays are due to to adverse weather conditions. Information on thunderstorms, ceiling and visibility, wind shear, turbulence, and aircraft icing conditions are crucial to avoid aviation hazards, improve aircraft safety, and reduce air traffic delays. This chapter gives an overview of some of the actions taken to develop integrated systems that can help in mitigating the weather-related aviation risks, both at the local scale (terminal) and larger scale (en-route). Weather data from different sources and instruments, such as ground-based observation systems (wind profilers, lidar, sodar, radiometer, ceilometer) as well as meteorological numerical model output, are combined to identify weather hazards.