An Integrated Approach to Mid- and Upper-Level Turbulence Forecasting

TLDR

The study presents an automated method for forecasting mid‑ and upper‑level turbulence that impacts aircraft. The Graphical Turbulence Guidance system derives turbulence diagnostics from numerical weather prediction outputs, combines them into a weighted sum optimized against recent pilot reports, and is validated through statistical verification of detection probabilities and diagnostic comparisons. The integrated approach reduces forecast errors by optimally weighting diagnostics and improves overall turbulence forecast performance, as demonstrated by statistical verification.

Abstract

Abstract An automated procedure for forecasting mid- and upper-level turbulence that affects aircraft is described. This procedure, termed the Graphical Turbulence Guidance system, uses output from numerical weather prediction model forecasts to derive many turbulence diagnostics that are combined as a weighted sum with the relative weights computed to give best agreement with the most recent available turbulence observations (i.e., pilot reports of turbulence or PIREPs). This procedure minimizes forecast errors due to uncertainties in individual turbulence diagnostics and their thresholds. Thorough statistical verification studies have been performed that focused on the probabilities of correct detections of yes and no PIREPs by the forecast algorithm. Using these statistics as a guide, the authors have been able to intercompare individual diagnostic performance, and test various diagnostic threshold and weighting strategies. The overall performance of the turbulence forecast and the effect of these strategies on performance are described.