En route wind data

[CarlBB]

Hi,

Just curious what is the actual source of upperwind (temps, etc.) data? Asking as I was talking to one of our pilots the other day and concluded the aircraft that are flying can provide the best source of some data? Is the data from aircraft taken and blended in with other forecasts? A bit like the waze app for traffic conditions?

Thanks

Carl

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

Some aircraft indeed relay wind data and other things they can measure, sometimes with dedicated meteo instrumentation. This data goes into a pool that airlines that pay can use (you can pay also by feeding data into the pool yourself). The usual meteo organisations that bring out the guesswork maps with winds aloft may look at this data too nowadays, but when I was working feeding that data a few years ago, it was restricted to payers-only.

A similar system measures the amount of turbulence and relays it from some airplanes live (via ACARS). IATA TurbulenceAware organizes this. Typically your EFB internets the data from the pool and displays known turbulence areas.

[FlyItLikeYouStoleIt]

The accuracy of each weather model forecast depends on the timing of the base data and whether it was supplemented by aircraft data on upper atmospheric winds. Big weather events in the USA which ground a lot of flights have also had negative impacts on forecast accuracy.

Look up AMDAR and  Mode-S EHS