Meteorological Support at Airports in Europe

A proprietary road model that MeteoGroup has developed and used over the past several years is currently deployed across 14 countries in Europe. It is primarily used for hazardous road monitoring and forecasting for hazards such as snow and black ice. However, the model has turned out to be an excellent tool to forecast runway temperatures as well. Built in runway sensors allow us to statistically postprocess the physical road model thus creating an optimally calibrated mix between the physical and statistical approaches. In addition to the calibrated physical and statistical process a thermal map is generated at each airport to support the modeling thus showing in great detail the cold and warm spots of the airport runway.

Based on the successful tests we did at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam we currently provide operational information to more than 30 airports in Europe from high-latitudes in the north (Helsinki and Copenhagen Airport) to lower latitudes in the south (Milan Airport).

In this presentation an overview will be given of the forecast and monitoring activities and some results will be discussed.