Aviation safety can be jeopardized by multiple hazards arising from natural phenomena, e.g. severe weather, Aerosols/gases from natural hazard, space weather, and, though not directly affecting the safety of aviation but the planet, the climatic impact of aviation. Flying through thunderstorms might lead to strong turbulence, wind shear, downbursts, icing, lightning and hail. Other factors affecting aviation safety are due to aerosols/gases arising from natural hazards, e.g. fire smokes, desert dust or volcanic ash and SO2 plumes: Dense smoke clouds from wildfire and dus in low altitude drastically reduce visibility. The engine ingestion of dust/smoke aerosols can also induce severe damages (erosion, corrosion, pitot-static tube blockage). Volcanic ash and SO2 gases are also major hazards, causing windscreen abrasions, reduction of visibility, damage to aircraft instrumentation and systems, hot corrosion Space weather effects on aviation include: the disruption of radio/satellite communication; the degradation of navigation systems; increased radiation exposure to crew and passenger. Last but not least, aviation-induced climate change (also considered herein as a hazard) is not being considered today in ATM decision-making. Facing the continuing expansion of air traffic, the goal ofdeveloping a climatic aviation becomes increasingly challenging.
The overall objective of ALARM project is to develop a prototype global multi-hazard monitoring and Early Warning System for all these above exposed hazards. Continuous global Earth observations from satellite, ground-based systems, and atmospheric forecasts will be used to feed models capable of observing and predicting (nowcasting/forecasting) the displacement of particles in suspension and gas derived from natural hazards; severe weather situations; exposure to increased levels of solar radiation; and environmental hotspots potentially contributing to global warming in a large extent.
Specifically, the aim is to enhance situational awareness of all stakeholders in case of hazard crisis by facilitating the transfer of required relevant information to end-users, presenting such information in a user-friendly manner to ATM stakeholders. In summary, anticipating severe hazards and fostering better decision-making.
We can consider 5 specific objectives:
1. to develop an advanced alert system hazard service (Early Warning System – EWS). It will include alerts on particle dispersion hazards (volcanic ash, sulphur, dust clouds, smoke from forest fires) and space weather events (exposure to increased radiation levels) on a global scale (long-line flights), severe weather hazards (deep convection, extreme weather, icy clouds) on a regional scale (localised airports), and environmental hotspots (persistent contrails areas) on a global scale.
2. to bring together observational data with hindcast data in order to develop a bias correction metric that can be used to build an alarm forecast system of SO2 for airports.
3. to define the state of the art of extreme weather in EU and its connection to the climate change, and to develop nowcasting algorithms for locally developed convective systems.
4. Provide algorithms for environmental/climate hot spots based on state-of-art algorithmic climate change functions, define MET data requirements and evaluate climate impacts.
5. Develop the roadmap for future development and deployment, and draft information requirements for the SWIM service for the alert products developed in WP2 to WP5. Develop visualization API.
