For airline passengers who dread bumpy rides to mountainous destinations, help may be on the way. A new turbulence avoidance system has, for the first time, been approved for use at a U.S. airport, and can be adapted for additional airports in rugged settings across the United States and overseas.
The system, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), provides information pilots can use to route aircraft away from patches of potentially dangerous turbulence. It uses a network of wind measuring instruments and computational formulas to interpret rapidly changing atmospheric conditions.
The Federal Aviation Administration formally commissioned the system in July for Alaska’s Juneau International Airport. NCAR researchers can now turn their attention to adapting the system to other airports that often have notoriously severe turbulence, in areas ranging from southern California and the Mountain West to Norway and New Zealand.
The system offers the potential to substantially reduce flight delays. In Alaska’s capital city, where it is known as the Juneau Airport Wind System, or JAWS, it enables the airport to continue operations even during times of turbulence by highlighting corridors of smooth air for safe takeoffs and landings.
The NCAR team used research aircraft and computer simulations to determine how different wind patterns — such as winds that come from the north over mountains and glaciers and winds that come from the southeast over water — correlated with specific areas of turbulence near the airport. To do this they installed anemometers and wind profilers at key sites along the coast and on mountain ridges. The team has installed ruggedized, heated instruments that can keep functioning even when exposed to extreme cold, wind, and heavy icing conditions.
The five anemometer sites and three wind profiler sites around the airport transmit data multiple times every minute. Pilots can get near-real-time information about wind speed and direction, and a visual readout showing regions of moderate and severe turbulence in the airport’s approach and departure corridors.
