Weather Sensing and Data Fusion to Improve Safety and Reduce Delays at Major West Coast Airports

The principal focus of FAA terminal weather information systems (e.g., LLWAS, TDWR, ITWS and the ASR-9 WSP) has been on convective weather. Since major West Coast airports have relatively little convective weather, there have been relatively few studies of their terminal weather information needs except for the SFO stratus burn off research program.

This paper describes the results of a study of LAX, SFO, PDX and SEA to determine if there were significant unmet safety and delay reduction needs for these airports that would not be adequately addressed by the planned deployment of ASR-9 WSPs. We found significant unmet needs in several areas:

(1) triggered lightning strikes to aircraft in the TRACON from weakly electrified storms at SEA and PDX

(2) significant vertical wind shear at PDX

(3) terminal winds information to improve aircraft merging and sequencing during winter storms and other "unusual" weather at LAX, SFO and SEA, and

(4) weather information to support reduced wake vortex separations at SFO and LAX

The paper will discuss the weather phenomenology and airport topography that generates the needs and candidate sensor/data fusion configurations to address the unmet needs.