June 17th, 2008

You are currently browsing the articles from Turbulence Forecast Blog written on June 17th, 2008.

Laminar Flow vs Turbulent Flow

Here are two great approximations of turbulence near the jet stream. While the jet stream can cause a turbulent flight, it can also be smooth. This is why turbulence is so hard to predict.


Turbulent


Laminar

Written by tb_neg on June 17th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Interesting and Uncategorized.

Most flights, most of the time, are smooth.

While this PDF document is heavy reading, it is a fascinating read if you have the time. The document has an interesting excerpt that states that most turbulence is proportionately over reported and smooth flights are under reported.

From: SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES FOR REGIONAL CLEAR-AIR TURBULENCE PREDICTION

In-situ data provides a better representation of turbulence statistics in the atmosphere (Dutton (1980), Sharman et al. (2006)). Figure 1 shows that over 99% of in-situ reports are reports of null turbulence. If this distribution is representative, at any time at most 0.01% of the atmosphere at upper levels should contain MOG turbulence. In contrast, about half of PIREPs report null turbulence, 27% report light, 17% report moderate and 1% report severe; thus, pilots substantially underreport the null events. In-situ data overcomes this uncertainty by reporting data every minute during flight.

Written by tb_neg on June 17th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Interesting.