Winds aloft and clear air turbulence
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Would it be possible to add the winds aloft forecast and clear air turbulence? Another thought would to have an overlay of aeronautical charts as an option.
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Clear-air turbulence ... by it's nature can not be predicted by anyone using a weather model. It is an unseen random event caused by a large number different mechanisms.
Areas and altitudes of turbulence probabilities could potentially be squeezed out of Windy's models as a secondary product of processing. But there are many different types and intensities of turbulence, at different altitudes, different terrains and different temperatures. You would be much better off buying a subscription to a professional specialist aviation provider's turbulence forecasting product than hoping for such to appear in Windy any time soon.
Overlay of aeronautical charts .. this is a weather app.
Winds aloft forecasting ... already exists within Windy.
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@WXcycles
@dispatchdog
@ivo
Mean Clear Air Turbulence Potential (MECAT)
is a parameter already provided in GRIB format
https://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/docs/on388/table2.html#TABLE140
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+1 : Mean air clear turbulence potential would be a nice feature to add because I think it is interesting for all the community and not only for pilots. To go further, In cloud turbulence is available the same way. I've seen some maps using those GRIBs and I'm sure the result on Windy would be awesome...
I was thinking of Sigmets which are also georeferenced but they ar emore intended to be used by pilots... As WXcycles said, Windy is first a weather app... I don't know about future evolutions!
...Regarding clear air turbulence detection & forecasting...
As far as I know, today we can detect CAT from the ground with MST (mesosphere, stratosphere, troposphere) Radars. However they have a very limited range to detect CAT. Airborne weather radars on planes are not capable of detecting CAT, but only turbulence in rain, dense clouds or ice clouds (which is good because those can be way more dangerous than CAT). Some laser systems are able to detect CAT, but they are still too expensive and need too much power to run. Researchers are still playing with them.
Some atmospheric models can also be used to forecast CAT by using additional parameters, and sometimes by mixing certain model computations, I couldn't tell you how though :) . But the results are still today not satisfactory. This is why the main data used by forecasters to depict CAT on aviation charts are pilot reports, and jet streams positions because they know they are almost always linked with CAT. However, like I said, those charts using the GRIBS can be interesting...
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@dispatchdog said in Winds aloft and clear air turbulence:
Would it be possible to add the winds aloft forecast and clear air turbulence? Another thought would to have an overlay of aeronautical charts as an option.
Have you checked out XC skies? That site specializes in soaring forecasts, including winds aloft, updraft velocity, buoyancy to shear ratio, CAPE, etc. I use it a lot and love it.
Downsides: obviously, it may or may not be what you're looking for; doesn't help you if you really wanted all that in Windy; subscription needed to use all available forecast features (though you can check it out for a month or so for free).url for clicky above: https://www.xcskies.com/
