Meteorological Technology International
  • News
    • A-E
      • Agriculture
      • Automated Weather Stations
      • Aviation
      • Climate Measurement
      • Data
      • Developing Countries
      • Digital Applications
      • Early Warning Systems
      • Extreme Weather
    • G-P
      • Hydrology
      • Lidar
      • Lightning Detection
      • New Appointments
      • Nowcasting
      • Numerical Weather Prediction
      • Polar Weather
    • R-S
      • Radar
      • Rainfall
      • Remote Sensing
      • Renewable Energy
      • Satellites
      • Solar
      • Space Weather
      • Supercomputers
    • T-Z
      • Training
      • Transport
      • Weather Instruments
      • Wind
      • World Meteorological Organization
      • Meteorological Technology World Expo
  • Features
  • Online Magazines
    • April 2025
    • January 2025
    • September 2024
    • April 2024
    • Archive Issues
    • Subscribe Free!
  • Opinion
  • Videos
  • Supplier Spotlight
  • Expo
LinkedIn Twitter Facebook
  • Sign-up for Free Weekly E-Newsletter
  • Meet the Editors
  • Contact Us
  • Media Pack
LinkedIn Facebook
Subscribe
Meteorological Technology International
  • News
      • Agriculture
      • Automated Weather Stations
      • Aviation
      • Climate Measurement
      • Data
      • Developing Countries
      • Digital Applications
      • Early Warning Systems
      • Extreme Weather
      • Hydrology
      • Lidar
      • Lightning Detection
      • New Appointments
      • Nowcasting
      • Numerical Weather Prediction
      • Polar Weather
      • Radar
      • Rainfall
      • Remote Sensing
      • Renewable Energy
      • Satellites
      • Solar
      • Space Weather
      • Supercomputers
      • Training
      • Transport
      • Weather Instruments
      • Wind
      • World Meteorological Organization
      • Meteorological Technology World Expo
  • Features
  • Online Magazines
    1. April 2025
    2. January 2025
    3. September 2024
    4. April 2024
    5. January 2024
    6. September 2023
    7. April 2023
    8. Archive Issues
    9. Subscribe Free!
    Featured
    April 15, 2025

    In this Issue – April 2025

    By Web TeamApril 15, 2025
    Recent

    In this Issue – April 2025

    April 15, 2025

    In this Issue – January 2025

    December 13, 2024

    In this Issue – September 2024

    August 8, 2024
  • Opinion
  • Videos
  • Supplier Spotlight
  • Expo
Facebook LinkedIn
Subscribe
Meteorological Technology International
Features

FEATURE: How the commercial aviation industry is leveraging weather intelligence to navigate extreme weather events and associated costs

Kevin RozarioBy Kevin RozarioSeptember 28, 202311 Mins Read
Share LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Email
Share
LinkedIn Facebook Twitter Email

Aviation is probably the safest mode of mass transportation available. It is also among the most complex, with many elements contributing to the relatively low rate of accidents and deaths. Among those elements is weather forecasting.

As well as the obvious safety aspect, there are environmental considerations. Bad weather forced airlines to fly one million extra kilometers in 2019, burning more than 6,000 tons of extra fuel that produced 19,000 tons of CO2, according to a 2021 study carried out by Egis and the UK Met Office on behalf of Eurocontrol (the European organization for the safety of air navigation).

At the regulatory level there is a slew of international standards, recommended practices, procedures and guidance for aeronautical meteorological service providers to fall in line with. “This ensures a uniform provision of service whenever and wherever an aviation operation is taking place in the air or on the ground,” explains Greg Brock, head of services for aviation at the WMO.

The WMO and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have an extensive list of rules and regulations for aviation. They both work closely with other partners including the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) and the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Associations (IFATCA).

Aviation hazards can be anything from crosswinds and ice storms to hurricanes and ash clouds from volcanic eruptions. The formal list covers wind, temperature, visibility (including obscuration thereof, such as fog), pressure, precipitation (rain, snow), sand and dust storms, thunderstorms, hail, cloud type, cloud base/top, convection, icing, turbulence, volcanic ash, space weather, releases of radioactive material, tropical cyclones and more. Each poses its own level of danger and needs to be forecast and monitored.

The WMO’s most recently updated aviation hazards guidance covers everything from wake vortices to lightning. “Of course, to deliver the services that aviation users demand ‘on time and in full’ – and for which aviation users often pay through landing charges, en-route charges and suchlike – there are the necessary underpinnings of scientific R&D and infrastructure,” says Brock.

Much of that is happening in the wider scientific community due to more investigation on climate change and the increase in extreme weather events, both of which directly impact aviation. The Eurocontrol report cites two areas of particular threat to aviation in the years ahead:

  • Extreme sudden rainfall and rising sea levels with two-thirds of coastal or low-lying airports in Europe expected to be at greater risk of flooding in the event of a storm surge;
  • Major storms, which cost aviation an estimated €2.2bn (US$2.4bn) in 2019 in terms of en-route delays, are likely to increase in intensity.

While 91% of coastal airports in Europe are smaller and less network-critical, major airports are intensifying their contingency planning to include climate-change risk assessments. According to Eurocontrol, a one-day airport closure triggered by flash floods could cost from €3m (US$3.3m) for a medium-size airport up to €18m (US$19.8m) for a major hub, in terms of diverted and canceled flights and clean-up measures.

One of the world’s biggest hubs, London Heathrow Airport, works closely with the UK Met Office on bad weather mitigation. The government department provides regulated weather services for all civil aerodromes in the UK and additional enhanced services for several major airports.

Meteorological staff can be based at an airport or remotely at the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter to provide support to enable the airports to operate safely and efficiently. “The type of weather information needed to aid decision making at an airport centers around summer and winter activities,” explains Lauren Donohue, Met Office aviation business manager. “Specifically, very cold or windy conditions and summer convective storms.”

Hubs such as Heathrow naturally want alerts about disruptive weather as early as possible. “As soon as action plans can be implemented, the disruption can be better managed through additional staff being deployed, planning to tie down equipment, or gritting/de-icing the airfield,” she says.

Thereafter, updates to the forecast that provide additional clarity on time of impact, thresholds for decision making and risk management are all key to understanding if, and how, operations may change.

Flight planning is more tactical
The story is a little different for flight planning and en-route services. Donohue comments, “The information tends to be more tactical in nature, where the wind forecast is used as the initial basis for the route the flight may take. However, once in the air the pilot can request weather uplinks, for example via the Met Office’s 4-Dimensional Trajectory service, which helps identify optimizations in flight as well as avoid thunderstorms and turbulence.”

A new World Area Forecast System (WAFS) upgrade is coming from the Met Office in November 2023. It will provide a major enhancement to the detail available for atmospheric data and will be particularly useful for flight planning. As a general rule, Donohue stresses the importance of clear messaging around the weather type. “Many users do not have a deep understanding of how weather phenomena may evolve, so clear thresholds in wind strength or precipitation can help them estimate risk,” she explains.

“Meteorologists are not aeronautical experts either and will not advise on the likely impacts or cause of action for an airport or airline, but rather demonstrate what the meteorological conditions may bring.”

Airports use observation capabilities such as temperature, pressure, rainfall and winds to understand weather parameters. These are available in the tower and to airfield operations teams to make them aware of the ‘here and now’ conditions. “In addition, many airfields have sensors in the runway to determine the temperature of the runway and how it may be affected by very hot or cold conditions,” says Donohue.

While several apps and online sources can provide free weather information, expert weather services are tailored to airports. They take into account the local area and specific detail of the airport’s location and type of operations. The Met Office’s OpenRunway and Network Weather Resilience (NWR) services are examples of solutions that are available both in an operations room as well as out on the airfield.

One aim at the Met Office is to increase the resolution of its forecasts, as well as the number of ensembles, to provide more certainty and detail in the forecast. “We are going to be refreshing our Aviation Visualization Services over the next few years and understanding the desires for additional weather information will be key,” reveals Donohue.

Typhoons and lightning
Another major global gateway in Asia-Pacific, Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), works closely with the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO), the designated meteorological authority providing weather services for aviation, much as in the UK.

The HKO operates the Airport Meteorological Office (AMO) in the airport to monitor hazardous weather phenomena that might affect the safety of airport operations and aircraft in flight. The around-the-clock Integrated Airport Centre (IAC) communicates closely with HKO’s aeronautical meteorological advisers stationed at the IAC and aviation forecasters at the AMO.

For example, during typhoon season, when a storm is approaching the city the HKO will alert the general public as well as the airport community with updates. Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) will hold meetings with stakeholders – including airlines, ground services providers, cargo terminal operators, ramp operators and the Civil Aviation Department – to ensure that the airport is well prepared.

To ensure safe airport operations under lightning weather, the Airport Lightning Warning System (ALWS) was established. When the HKO detects lightning or forecasts a strike within 1km of the apron area, a red lightning warning is issued, during which ground services staff should stop working and seek shelter. At that point, all baggage, cargo and meals loading and unloading, and aircraft refueling, is suspended.

Lightning warnings are disseminated from the Apron Control Centre through an Auto Voice Message Distribution System to all frontline workers. Ramp personnel are also alerted in real time by audio and visual signals at their work sites.

Many of these, and other services, are offered by private operators as well as by state-funded weather organizations. Some of the larger players, including Finland’s Vaisala, DTN in Minneapolis and Alabama-based Baron Weather, have comprehensive products for aviation, moving forward from regulated Automated Weather Observing Systems (AWOS).

The rising cost of tropical cyclones
Vaisala serves more than 2,000 airports in approximately 170 countries. One of its new products is in the lightning segment. “We have our own global lightning detection system providing lightning data anywhere in the world at high resolution,” says Aleksis Kajava, the company’s director for Europe and Latin America.

The Thunderstorm Manager v1.5, released in April and part of the Xweather family of products, has introduced new weather layers for improved situational awareness and a secure alerting API (application programming interface) for integrating lightning alerts into local displays, control centers and other systems.

The new tropical cyclone layer offers intuitive visualizations that show the severity and projected path of cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons with three levels of alerts (information, warning and alarm). Losses from tropical cyclones and severe storms in the USA in 2022 cost almost US$140bn according to NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Hurricane Ian alone caused losses of around US$100bn.

Vaisala invests about €60m (US$66m) in R&D, roughly 12-14% of the company’s turnover. In general, private companies tend to invest in equipment while national entities tend to focus their R&D on forecasting. The UK’s Met Office is an exception to this in that it also develops its own radars, for example.

In the USA, Baron Weather offers several data sets to mitigate a variety of conditions. The Baron Weather API enables developers of flight tracking and planning services to integrate high-quality aviation weather data. Powered by AWS (the Amazon Web Services platform for cloud computing that lets a remote computer access resources without having to install any software) and featuring a RESTful architecture, the API is a customizable data feed that Baron says “scales to the size of any organization”.

In total the company offers more than 200 meteorological data products, including more than 60 Baron exclusives, designed to protect pilots, passengers and cargo. One example is satellite-derived radar, which is useful in providing imagery for areas not covered by traditional land-based radar. “This data set is particularly helpful in identifying storms developing offshore, such as cyclones and hurricanes,” says a Baron spokesperson.

A key concern during thunderstorm seasons is the risk of strong downburst or microburst winds that have the potential to blow at 130-160km/h or more, in and around airports. “These winds are typically small in area, but exceptionally hard to predict and can occur suddenly and with ferocity,” says Brad Nelson, solution engineer and meteorologist at DTN.

He adds, “The threats are not only to the airport but to air traffic itself as these winds have brought down approaching aircraft in the past due to ‘fly up/fly down’ microbursts and have led to many near disasters.”

A dedicated meteorologist on hand
One of DTN’s solutions is Risk Communicator (RC), a holistic service for airports to help anticipate such weather impacts by partnering and working closely with a professional meteorologist. This way airport operations officials are able to get high-value, accurate information on the potential for downburst or microburst winds, for example.

The RC meteorologists monitor radar trends and communicate which thunderstorms and areas have the greatest risk of these high winds. This enables higher confidence decisions to be made with more lead time. “Airports can also staff ahead of time for these types of events and activate the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) if deemed necessary from the information provided by the RC,” says Dave Berry, aviation solutions engineer at DTN.

This kind of information as a whole is designed to feed into the collaborative decision making (CDM) process whereby all stakeholders – airports, airlines and air navigation service providers (ANSP) – can actively, but collectively, manage this kind of crucial weather event. Others might include straight-line winds and tornadoes.

By using RC to feed in alerts of a tornado risk, ideally 30 minutes or more ahead of time, this also offers greater confidence when high winds and tornadoes might come close but are expected to miss the airport. In that scenario, a decision to keep the airport open and functioning normally can lead to big cost savings.

From these few examples, it is clear that severe weather mitigation options for the aviation industry are varied. From dedicated systems to APIs and remote cloud platforms, the choices are numerous and growing. But perhaps the overriding factor should be ease of use and clarity of message.

“For aviation stakeholders, it’s vital to get weather information in the right kind of format so that it’s easy to interpret and take action,” says Vaisala’s Kajava. “Moving from the legacy of cryptic, short messages such as METAR to more comprehensive weather information is going to be the trend.”

This article originally appeared in the September 2023 issue ofMeteorological Technology International. To view the magazine in full click here.

Previous ArticleReece Williams appointed lead engineer at Biral
Next Article EWR introduces a low-profile, solid-state weather radar system

Read Similar Stories

Features

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Ramla Qureshi, McMaster University’s Department of Civil Engineering

May 14, 20257 Mins Read
Features

FEATURE: How are NOAA’s latest buoys tackling ocean acidification?

March 18, 20256 Mins Read
Features

INTERVIEW: Météo-France

March 14, 20255 Mins Read
Latest News

NASA selects University of Texas at Arlington researcher for wildfire smoke warning system

May 23, 2025

University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft Research develop machine-learning weather prediction model

May 22, 2025

VIDEO: Caltech’s autonomous underwater vehicle harnesses ocean currents to improve ocean monitoring

May 21, 2025

Receive breaking stories and features in your inbox each week, for free


Enter your email address:


Supplier Spotlights
  • ELDES S.r.l.
Latest Job Postings
  • Postdoctoral researcher position on land surface and vegetation modelling (R2)

    • Barcelona
    • Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación
    • Full Time
  • HPC Engineer for Earth Sciences applications (RE1/2)

    • Barcelona
    • Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación
    • Full Time
Getting in Touch
  • Contact Us / Advertise
  • Meet the Editors
  • Download Media Pack
  • Free Weekly E-Newsletter
Our Social Channels
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
© 2025 UKi Media & Events a division of UKIP Media & Events Ltd
  • Cookie Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Notice and Takedown Policy

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the ...
Necessary
Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.

CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Functional

Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.

Performance

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

Analytics

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Advertisement

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.

Others

Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.

SAVE & ACCEPT
Powered by