Royal Met Society Conference – Services To Aviation – 8 December 2010 – Imperial College London
Developments in Nat Weather for Aviation Services – Andy Wells
- UK Met Service provision includes observation at aerodromes
- ICAO dictates the requirement for aviation to be met by each States
- World Met Org set the standards
- World area weather forecast system has 2 centres producing global weather forecasts at Exeter and Kansas
- Automated observing systems now deployed in UK airports for quieter periods of operations
- Centralisation of Met Services is underway to produce a common weather picture
- The aim is to better use of Met info in ATC planning and routing
- 75% of Heathrow arrivals delays are caused by weather
- Volcanic ash impact has similar effect
- The Icelandic volcano erupted in April 10
- Jagged ash particles can have serious adverse effects on ac and engines
- Avoidance of visible ash has been the usual way to deal with the problem
- Cloud and night time are not helpful for this approach
- The revised ICAO/Eur/NAT approach is to identify high, medium and low ash density
- Other European Developments
- Single European Sky
- Initial SES1 regulations issued in 2004 followed by Implementing Rules
- SES II Regs and amendments to SES I Regs issued in 2009
- Functional Airspace Blocks (FAB)
- European Central FAB will take 75% of traffic
- A State Performance Scheme will set binding EU-wide performance targets
- Safety -monitor only
- Capacity – delays
- Environment – route efficiency
- Cost effectiveness – Met costs
- EASA has Met Services as part of its extension into aerodromes
- Met service implementing rules will be developed
- SESAR
- SESARJU will facilitate decision-making on ATM for all stakeholders
- SESAR brings in trajectory – based operations which moves Met provision from being advisory to becoming operational critical
- Met is needed to enable ATM to manage weather uncertainty with confidence
- Single European Sky
Study into Climate optimised of Transatlantic Routes – Emma Irvine
- International aviation and shipping is a minor contributor to global warming but a cut by 80% by 2025 is being demanded as a target for aviation
- Aviation contributes around 2.5 % of climate change (Range varies 2-14%)
- High level contrails are major contributors towards global warming
- React4C Organisation is looking at optimising routes to reduce climate effect
- Focus is on US-Europe North Atlantic routes with 300 flights per day
- Contrailing – questions being asked whether to act or not on emissions from contrail production
- UKFSC CE – Summary
- This study asks more questions than it answers and was based on too many false assumptions
Scientific Challenges Around Volcanic Ash Advice – Professor Brian Golding
- Regulatory Background
- 1982 – BA 747 4 – engine loss initiated the International Airways Volcano Watch
- 1991 – Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres established by ICAO
- 2010 Iceland volcano erupted!
- London VAAC has responsibility for Iceland eruptions
- Melting ash – leading to overheating in the engine core
- Safe ash quantities are being pursed by engine manufacturers
- Ash problems are caused by accumulation not by instant impact
- Optimum management requires knowledge of a great deal of data and some notice to analyse it
- Major data source requirement is the origin of the plume and the contents within it, including particle size and density of the ash
- Assumption is that the distribution is uniform vertically
- Plume is observable by radar
- But the variation in density is actually an order of magnitude
- Products under developments are:
- Average concentration levels from the plume
- Improvement of source estimation
- Climatology for given height and eruptions types
- In situ observations
- Downwind observation and inversion
- Volcano simulation models
- Forecasting the plume
- Current model takes 6 days to spin up and provides a 5 day forecast
- Predicting vertical extent
- Extremely difficult to predict precisely which means no-fly buffer zones would be needed- not entirely helpful
- Interpreting and fine tuning the forecast
- Best achievable result is an error factor of 3
- Satellite imagery tracks extent ht and ash load of plume in good weather
- Lidar observations track extent and height of plume over land
- Aerosol sonde samples provide a profile thro the plume
- Civil contingencies ac can observe the plume using lidar
- In a hazardous situation, communication of the risk must be clear and unambiguous
- VA is issued as a Sigmet by code – very complex and changes regularly
- Text comms
- Graphical representations on sig weather charts
- Individual aviation hazards are communicated as a digital graphics layer for user displays
- Aviation winds are communicated as a 4D digital data streams – not possible yet!
- Plume track is well modelled but vertical density is uncertain
- Skilful modelling interpretation is required
Meterological Threat and Error Management – Rob Seaman UK Met Office
- Over 23% of accident are directly related to the weather
- How do you manage complex threats?
- Threats need management asap to retain safety margins
- This requires increases in workload for the pilot
- Threats include CBs, icing, turbulence, poor vis low cloud, VA
- 82% of CFITs occurs due poor weather
- Press-on-itis often plays its part towards a negative outcome in an incident
- TEM Management techniques include:
- Anticipate – Wx Forecast
- Recognise – interpretation of actual observations onboard and wx actuals
- Recover safely using the weather alternate plan – strategic decision using pre-flight planning
Rich Jones
Chief Executive
UKFSC
14 Januray 2011
