Air traffic statistics for summer 2018 show a double augmentation of en-route delays caused by weather events. Confirmed over the years, this tendency highlights the need for a support decision tool for ATFCM. This tool, VigiAero, has been designed as a SWIM web service dedicated to predicting the impact of adverse weather on the European network for the next 24 hours. FRACS, MetSafe and DSNA teamed up to bring VigiAero into full operation in the ATC room with the support of SESAR ENGAGE. This presentation will focus on showcasing the lessons learned during the validation and pre-operational trials held during summer 2020 with the Reims En Route Control Center.

In this presentation we will talk about our research and solutions dedicated to the aviation field, their benefits and also our participation in SESAR. We will mainly focus on three deployable, ready-for-market systems: the Airport Runway Weather Information System, which detects and predicts runway conditions using the Global Reporting Format; Advanced Aviation Weather Decision Support System, which translates detected, nowcasted and forecasted phenomena affecting the airport operation to ATC domain; and AeroVis/AeroCloud for Remote Tower, which is a camera-based prevailing visibility and cloud coverage system.

Aviation safety can be jeopardized by multiple hazards arising from natural phenomena, such as severe weather; aerosols/gases from volcanic eruptions, sand storms and forest fires; and solar radiation. In addition, aviation-induced climate change (also considered herein as a hazard) is not being considered in ATM decision making today. Continuous global Earth observations from satellite, ground-based systems and atmospheric forecasts, combined with modern artificial intelligence tools and state-of-the-art climate impact models, will be used to feed models capable of observing and predicting (nowcasting/forecasting) the displacement of particles in suspension and gas derived from natural hazards (volcanic ash and SO2, dust clouds from sandstorms and smoke from forest fires); severe weather situations such as deep convection and extreme weather; exposure to increased levels of solar radiation during flight; and environmental hotspots potentially contributing to global warming to a large extent. Specifically, the aim is to enhance situational awareness of all stakeholders in case of multiple hazard crises, by facilitating the transfer of required relevant information to end users, and presenting such information in a user-friendly manner to ATM stakeholders. In summary, anticipating severe hazards, also considering climate impact as a hazard itself, with the aim of fostering better decision making and developing climate-friendly aviation.

Bad weather wreaks havoc on every element of the aviation industry, and its impact can be ongoing and costly. With more extreme weather events, changing precipitation patterns, increased coastal flooding and temperature extremes expected, it is even more critical that the industry be prepared. Find out how weather insights prepare airports today and what to expect in the future. Learn the weather-affected issues that airport operators need to address now to prevent, prepare for and mitigate the impact of our changing climate.

The new Global Reporting Format (GRF) framework will become effective in November 2021, to reduce the risk of runway overruns by providing an accurate methodology to determine non-dry runway conditions for airport operators. Friction measurements will no longer be used as the primary instrument for reporting, and the assessment must take place whenever there are significant changes to runway conditions, not just periodically. In this session, we will discuss what is needed to comply with the upcoming regulations, and present efficient and cost-effective solutions for monitoring, measuring and reporting the influence of weather (like snow and rain) on paved road and runway surfaces.

The presentation will show how to generate added value using camera-based observations. Starting with VisIvis as a high-resolution tool for visibility estimation, the talk presents results from a recent study performed together with Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD), Germany’s National Meteorological Service, on extending the concept of vision-based visibility measurement to other weather-related parameters. The present study investigated how an automated estimation of snow coverage can be achieved. Steps to establish reliable snow coverage detection will be presented, with results and evaluation from a challenging application scenario at a major German airport.

Weather radar systems ensure the availability of critical weather information for airport air traffic controllers by measuring precipitation and wind areas. Real-time information and high update rates are very important when dealing with traffic control at major aviation hubs. As a dedicated precipitation measurement device, the Gamic weather surveillance radar installed at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and in operational use since June 2019 fulfills this requirement and brings operational advantages over alternative systems used in ATM or by national weather services.

Weather is the largest cause of flight delays in the world. Roughly 70% of cases are related to weather, according to FAA and Eurocontrol. Every declared delay is informed by a safety procedure. Lightning activity is by far the most serious threat to ramp operations at airports, no matter their size. When lightning is imminent, handling, refueling and marshaling activities must cease immediately. In this presentation we will talk about the existing real-time lightning detection and warning technology to minimize the consequences of lightning threats for ramp operations and teams. We will discuss best practices for severe weather alerting, and profile global airports, air traffic management agencies and airlines prioritizing weather safety in order to reduce downtime and increase operational efficiency.

Meteorological observations from commercial aircraft are known to have a beneficial impact on numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems. So when Covid-19 began affecting aircraft flights, and the numbers of aircraft observations started dropping in Europe, mitigations were needed. Other EUMETNET observing systems were expected to be affected, so the Observations Programme undertook parallel actions to replace the missing in-situ data by increasing the number of radiosonde launches, and sourcing new and developing aircraft observation sources. Although it was not possible to backfill completely, in time and space, the atmospheric profiles missing from aircraft observing, Europe ended 2020 with many more aircraft observations than it had ever seen before.

European airspace is some of the most congested in the world, and the impacts of weather events continue to influence the aviation network, even with the reduced traffic of the last 12 months. Much of the work of the EUMETNET Aviation Program is to ensure a consistent and coordinated approach toward future cross-border forecasting, ensuring that weather information is available and communicated to all aviation stakeholders in a consistent way. This presentation will explore aspects of the current coordinated MET provision to organizations such as Eurocontrol’s Network Manager and how it may evolve in the future as aviation recovers over the next few years.

The European Meteorological Aircraft Derived Data Centre (EMADDC) is an operational center in development to utilize all aircraft in the European airspace to derive wind and temperature observations. The talk will provide a high-level overview of the aim and status of EMADDC and the impact of Covid-19. Surprisingly, Covid-19 is not purely negative: it has also accelerated the development of EMADDC and provided an opportunity to show the added value.

Covid-19 has dramatically affected the demand for aviation in 2020 and the start of 2021. The effects are felt not only in aviation, but also across the observation platforms for numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems, and output from aviation meteorology. Focusing on the insights from aviation meteorologists, and the impact on customers, Covid-19 has brought differing challenges, including reduced demand for services, reduced revenue, increased capacity within the network and new ways of operating. This presentation will explore some of these scenarios, provide initial subjective analysis and review ways of working that may benefit the industry in the future.

Meteorological reports from aircraft are an important source of data for global weather forecasting. Their largest impact is in the upper troposphere at short range. Due to the pandemic, the number of aircraft reports reduced by about 75% between mid-March and mid-April 2020, recovering somewhat to almost 50% of normal by July 2020. However, it is difficult to see any evidence of degradation in forecast skill, partly because forecast skill is rather variable. Also, new satellite data became available during 2020 and ECMWF started using European Mode-S aircraft winds to mitigate the loss of standard aircraft reports.

System Wide Information Management (SWIM) will become the default architecture by which we exchange meteorological information from producers to providers to users. While the specifications and standards continue to be developed, the EU has regulation in place mandating MET providers to develop SWIM solutions by the end of 2025. FMI has developed its SWIM architecture as part of a SESAR deployment project and plans to deploy the first services by Q3/2021, in time for the winter season. This presentation will discuss the concrete steps required to deploy SWIM from a MET producer point of view, and showcase some lessons learned along the way. We will also discuss the access and operational aspects of how to use these new services.

Safe and efficient flight operations are the first priority of any airline. Turbulence continues to be a major safety threat for airlines and is estimated to cost the aviation industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Pilots and dispatchers have historically relied on subjective meteorological forecasts and pilot reports for turbulence avoidance. This presentation will provide an overview of IATA’s approach to turbulence mitigation utilizing real-time data generated by aircraft in flight. This data-driven initiative is already creating a safer operational environment, minimizing injuries while enhancing efficiencies such as reducing fuel burn and CO2 emissions.

In the atmospheric surface layer, measurements of the vertical distribution of optical turbulence have been performed continuously at a 64m-high tower in northwestern Germany for more than 10 years. The results are used for the development of micrometeorological models and for model validation. Mesoscale weather forecast models are used for the simulation of the temporal and spatial distribution of turbulence and other meteorological parameters. Some of our results and investigations will be presented.

Meteorological conditions are integral to performing safe, efficient, economical and environmentally responsible domestic and international civil aviation operations at airports and in airspace. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), as a specialized agency of the United Nations, is playing a leading role in the development and implementation of new and improved meteorological services for aviation. This presentation will provide an overview of the prevailing drivers for change and will explore several key areas of ongoing meteorological scientific research. The presentation will also provide insight into the potential impacts of climate change and variability on aviation operations now and in the future.

An Aviation Research and Demonstration Project (AvRDP) was conducted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) between 2015 to 2019 to demonstrate the capability of nowcasting and mesoscale modelling techniques in support of the development of the next generation meteorological information for international air navigation. It focused on the airport terminal area and translation of the new meteorological information into Air Traffic Management (ATM) impact. Eleven airports around the world, with varying climatology, participated in this AvRDP. Building on the success of AvRDP Phase I, WMO’s Research Board has recently approved a follow up to the AvRDP, namely AvRDP Phase II, leveraging advances in meteorological observing, seamless nowcasting and forecasting research as well as artificial intelligence. AvRDP Phase II will focus on convection-related hazards and study the use of advance techniques such as ensembles, Machine Learning (ML) methodology in the provision of risk-based, hazard-impact information services that fully meet aviation users’ needs.

The presentation introduces the plans for future extension of the WMO AMDAR Programme in collaboration with the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The WMO and IATA have entered into a collaboration for the purposes of managing and evolving the global AMDAR Programme and expanding it to provide data coverage in areas of the globe where data gaps currently exist. The availability and different sources of aircraft-based observations (ABO) are also discussed with the aim of achieving increased availability of upper air data for data users and meteorological services.

The World Area Forecast System produces significant weather forecast charts, plus gridded forecasts of wind, temperature, relative humidity, turbulence, icing and thunderstorms. The Significant Weather Charts, best suited for situational awareness, will be dramatically improved in 2023. The gridded forecasts, for use by flight planning systems, will also be dramatically improved over the next few years. The coming improvements will provide more consistent, detailed and accurate information. However, the user community will need to update their systems in order to make use of the improvements.

Qualitatively, the threat volcanic ash poses to jet engines has been known since the early 1950s, but it took the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 to highlight the need for a quantitative understanding of how volcanic ash affects them. Even some years after the 2010 crisis, aviation operated a policy of volcanic ash total avoidance. This presentation describes the efforts undertaken since 2010 to gain a sufficiently robust quantitative understanding of the impacts volcanic ash has on jet engines, to allow some level of volcanic ash exposure during flight operations.