المنظمة العالمية للأرصاد الجوية

Scope

Aircraft-based observations have made a significant contribution to upper-air monitoring of the atmosphere since the early twentieth century. With the advent of sophisticated onboard equipment, data collection has become standardized and automated. These observations are made available for use by meteorological applications, through arrangements with partner airlines, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The data that aircraft collect is relayed to National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS), where they are processed, quality controlled and transmitted in real-time on the WMO Information System (WIS).

Aircraft-based observations play a big role in the accuracy of weather forecasts - reducing forecast errors in numerical weather prediction systems by up to 10% to 20%.

These data, shared around the world, can also be used for:

early warning systems of weather hazards,
weather monitoring and prediction in support of the aviation industry, to help make flying safer, more efficient and environmental, and
climate monitoring and prediction.

Structure

Currently, most aircraft data are shared through a WMO-led initiative, called AMDAR - Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay.

AMDAR was created by WMO and its Members, in collaboration with aviation partners in the 1990s, as an extension of the existing aviation manual and automated aircraft reports, which also contain meteorological information.

AMDAR is part of the Global Observing System (GOS), one of the component-observing systems of the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS). As such, GOS is also contributing to the WMO World Weather Watch.

AMDAR now produces more than half a million observations per day of air temperature and wind speed and direction, and a smaller volume of humidity observations per day, as a contribution to the WIGOS. AMDAR is also an optional component observing system of the Global Basic Observing Network (GBON), which supports numerical weather prediction.

In the future, WMO expects that another large source of aircraft-based observations will come from Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), made up of both small aircraft such as drones, as well as a range of fixed-wing aircraft with a potentially large range of applications in meteorological, hydrological and climate monitoring. WMO is supporting efforts towards understanding and advancing the use of UAS in their potential to measure weather parameters as a complementary observing system to traditional balloon-borne radiosondes.