Steve Ackerman - On Satellite Research and Aircraft Hazards

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Steve Ackerman, Director of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses using research satellites to identify aviation hazards as a prelude to operational products.

Using satellite observations to support aviation, in particular aviation hazards. As planes,
flights go back and forth across the oceans, there’re no measurements to determine where
hazards exist. And the way we find out about them now is planes fly into them. One thing
satellites can do is identify, in that imagery, in the analysis and those sequences of imagery,
from geostationary satellites in particular, where threats, where hazards are. Applying
the research that we’re doing, working with NOAA to develop operational algorithms that
can warn pilots that, “this is potentially a hazardous area; maybe you should fly around
it.” As we move into the next generation satellites we have more capability in terms
of the temporal sequences, in terms of the spatial resolution, in terms of the spectral
resolution. Whenever you want to improve forecasting with satellites those are the three things
that you want. You want better temporal resolution, better spatial resolution, better spectral
resolution. That’s what the next generation of weather satellites are bringing us. When
I talk about spectral resolution, I mean about wavelengths; our eyes are sensitive to certain
wavelengths, but there are other wavelengths that allow us to peer into the atmosphere
where our normal vision can’t see. What that enables us to do is to look at patterns
of circulation in the atmosphere, particularly up and down patterns which generates turbulence.
Also, certain wavelengths allow us to distinguish between ice in a cloud and liquid water in
a cloud. That, associated with the temperature of the cloud, allows us to identify where
icing conditions may occur. That’s certainly areas where aviation doesn’t want to be
flying into. This is again another advantage where the universities step in to help NOAA.
Because we conduct a lot of research, not just with NOAA but with NSF, with NASA, with
DoD. One of the things we’ve developed over the past couple of years through these other
collaborations is, “how do you detect supercooled water?” And in doing that, we use research
satellites. Now that we’ve developed techniques, we can now transfer those research sciences
into operational sciences through collaborations with NOAA through the Cooperative Institute.
We can take the things we’ve developed in research and work with NOAA to get them into
NOAA operations. Then it’s going into the forecasters and hopefully someday right into
the cockpit. I think this is a really exciting time; if you look at the geostationary satellites
that we have up there right now, they’re really based on designs that were done in
the 1980’s and we’re still doing really useful and good things with them. With the
next launch, of the GOES-R series, we’re taking another step in the amount of information
and the amount of science and the amount of weather forecasting we’re going to be able
to do with these new series. We’re really looking forward to that.