Can there be turbulence on sunny days? How does weather affect aviation?

What is the outdoor temperature? Is it windy, rainy or sunny? For everyone, "chatting about the weather" in their spare time is a common thing. But for civil aviation people who "depend on the weather for their livelihood", weather is a key factor affecting whether flights can operate safely and smoothly. There is a group of people in the operation control center of an airline. They accompany the clouds, dance with the wind, know when the snowflakes fall, and fly with the aircraft through every spring breeze and autumn rain. They are aviation meteorologists.

Meteorology “Exclusive to Aviation”

Aircraft are extremely sensitive to meteorological conditions. Weather phenomena such as wind shear, jet streams, and thunderstorms may pose a serious threat to flight safety. At the same time, due to the high efficiency of civil aviation transportation and the compact flight schedule, flights may be delayed or cancelled once affected by bad weather. This places higher demands on the timeliness, scope, and accuracy of aviation meteorologists' forecasts, and also determines that they must pay more attention to various meteorological elements such as wind speed, visibility, clouds, temperature, humidity, and air pressure in each flight area.

In order to better support flight takeoffs and landings, route adjustments, etc., aviation weather forecasts are usually released in a fixed-point, fixed-time, and quantitative manner. Fixed-point means that aviation weather forecasts must be accurate to the airport or specific waypoints and the surrounding tens of kilometers; fixed-time means that aviation weather forecasts must be accurate to the flight operation time interval, such as the weather forecast at takeoff and landing times; quantitative means that meteorological elements and intensity forecasts must be more accurate, such as wind speed accurate to meters per second, wind direction accurate to 10 degrees, visibility accurate to meters, etc. High-precision and high-timeliness meteorological information provides strong support for pilots' decision-making, and also helps airlines and airports take countermeasures in advance to reduce the impact of weather on flight operations.

Challenges posed by climate change

For flight safety, it is crucial to effectively predict the weather in the flight area based on meteorological factors. Timely and accurate weather forecasts can help airlines formulate more reasonable plans for flight safety, flight takeoffs and landings, and aircraft maintenance.

2023 is the year with the most sandstorms in the past 10 years. More than 10 airports including Aksu, Korla, Lanzhou, Hohhot, and Changchun have experienced sandstorms, with gusts reaching up to 25 meters per second. Dust will interfere with the pilot's visual judgment, and the accompanying strong winds will cause wind shear or turbulence. If dust enters the aircraft engine, it may cause serious wear and blockage of parts, seriously affecting flight safety. In view of this, sandstorm warnings can not only help dispatchers formulate release plans for aircraft operations, but also help pilots choose reliable alternate landing fields in advance, and help the maintenance department take anti-wind and sand measures in advance to protect the aircraft body.

During this year's Spring Festival travel rush, two rounds of large-scale rain, snow and freezing weather occurred in central and eastern China. Rain, snow and freezing weather will directly affect visibility, aircraft aerodynamic configuration and runway conditions, all of which are related to whether the aircraft can operate safely and on time. According to the different operating conditions of each airport, meteorologists will make detailed probabilistic forecasts of meteorological elements and provide key reminders in terms of predicting the direction of operation, predicting runway conditions, and the impact of snow and ice removal operations, so as to effectively improve operating efficiency.