WMO has held talks and entered into a new working arrangement with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on the operation of the global Aircraft Meteorological DAta Relay (AMDAR) system.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas met IATA Director General Alexandre de Juniac to discuss how IATA’s 265 airlines in over 117 countries can best contribute to AMDAR’s data gathering system.
“It’s a win-win situation,” said Mr Taalas.
WMO AMDAR observing system commenced around 30 years ago and has now grown to involve 40 airlines and over 4000 aircraft. Now a critical component of the WMO Global Observing System,the AMDAR system utilises aircraft onboard sensors, computers and communications systems to collect, process and transmit meteorological data to ground stations via satellite or radio links.
Once on the ground, the data is relayed to National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, where it is processed, quality controlled and transmitted on the WMO Global Telecommunications System (GTS).
The WMO global AMDAR system currently produces over 700,000 high-quality observations per day of air temperature and wind speed and direction, together with the required positional and temporal information and with an increasing number of humidity and turbulence measurements being made.
The data collected is used for a range of meteorological applications, including, public weather forecasting, climate monitoring and prediction, early warning systems for weather hazards and, importantly, weather monitoring and prediction in support of the aviation industry. AMDAR has significant positive impact on forecast accuracy which leads to improved forecasts and services to the aviation industry.
WMO has worked collaboratively with IATA over many decades to establish the meteorological technical methods and practices to fulfil the aeronautical users’ requirements. WMO and IATA work closely with their respective members to ensure fair and transparent cost recovery mechanisms are in place for aeronautical meteorological service provision.
IATA can help to expand and improve the operation of the AMDAR programme while WMO can help to ensure that data owned by airline partners is better secured.
WMO signed an agreement with the International Civil Aviation Organization in April to work more closely together.
Video on AMDAR here
