88th Annual Meeting (20-24 January 2008)

Tuesday, 22 January 2008: 9:30 AM
A High-resolution Rapidly-updated Meteorological Data Analysis System for Aviation Applications
226-227 (Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
C.S. Lau, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong; and J. T. K. Wan, M. C. Chu, and P. P. W. Li
Poster PDF (2.7 MB)
A high spatial- and temporal-resolution meteorological data analysis system is under development for identifying and monitoring mesoscale to microscale weather phenomena over the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) and its vicinity. The horizontal resolution of the analysis grid is 150 m and the update frequency is 10-minute. The system is adapted from the Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS), Global Systems Division of NOAA, with ultra-high resolution remote sensing data ingested. Apart from conventional data such as automatic weather stations, wind profilers and meteorological satellite observations, automatic aircraft reports (AMDAR), Doppler LIDARs and Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) data are ingested into the system. The LIDAR and TDWR data are complimentary to each other as the former are particularly useful for identifying the wind fields in clear air while the latter are for analyzing the wind fields during convective weather. Ingesting the above data sources in the analysis system helps generate a comprehensive 3-dimensional structure of the atmosphere over the airport and nearby airspace. The analysis system would also be useful for nowcasting aviation-related weather after integrating with numerical weather prediction models. This paper discusses the design of the system as well as its performance in a number of cases, including land-sea breeze, gust front, microburst and tropical cyclone, all of which could bring significant impacts on aircraft safety and air traffic efficiency to the flights operating at HKIA.

Supplementary URL: