Aviation Turbulence Theory, Detection, and Forecasting: Past, Present, and Future (Invited Presentation)

The prediction of turbulence for aviation applications has a relatively short history, beginning in the 1950s with long haul commercial airline flights at upper levels. Although pilots were familiar with turbulence at lower levels from the dawn of aviation, turbulence encounters, especially in clear-air (CAT) at upper levels, was a new phenomenon, and rules of thumb provided the only guidance for aviation turbulence forecasters, and these were often difficult to invoke and were based on incomplete understandings of the genesis and life cycles of turbulence. This lead to the establishment of a pilot reporting system (PIREPs) to identify encountered turbulence areas, a system which is still in place today. Over the years, especially the last 20 or so, our understanding of aviation turbulence has increased, in part because of the enhanced network of observations available, both ground-based and airborne. Given that aircraft respond to disturbances most favorably at scales about the size of the aircraft, direct prediction is not possible today, or even in the foreseeable future. However, the implementation of finer and finer operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models have allowed better inferences of aviation-scale turbulence likelihood, and this will continue to proceed rapidly as NWP models become finer scale and are able to better reproduce transient phenomena such as thunderstorms. The use of higher-resolution simulations to reproduce observed cases of turbulence have significantly advanced our understanding of turbulence processes over the last few years, and this enhanced understanding should help in suggesting better diagnostics of turbulence. Going forward, additional turbulence forecasting challenges will be introduced by possible climate change effects, and the need to provide forecasts for the UAV community, especially in urban environments.

In the spirit of supporting the theme for this year's AMS 100th annual meeting: The AMS Past, Present, and Future: Linking Information to Knowledge to Society (LINKS), this talk will review the unique aspects of the forecasting problem including verification requirements, summarize accomplishments to date, and suggest future research and operational and dissemination directions.

This research is in response to requirements and funding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the FAA.