Monitoring of Low-Level Wind Shear by Ground-based 3D Lidar for Increased Flight Safety, Protection of Human Lives and Health

Low-level wind shear, i.e., sudden changes in wind speed and/or wind direction up to altitudes of 1600 ft (500 m) above-ground is a hazardous meteorological phenomenon in aviation. It may radically change the aerodynamic circumstances of the flight, particularly during landing and take-off and consequently, it may threaten human lives and the health of passengers, people at the airport and its surrounding areas. The Bratislava Airport, the site of this case study, is one of the few airports worldwide and the first in Central Europe that is equipped with a Doppler lidar system, a perspective remote sensing tool for detecting low-level wind shear. The main objective of this paper was to assess the weather events collected over a period of one year with the occurrences of low-level wind shear situations, such as vertical discontinuities in the wind field, frontal passages and gust fronts to increase the level of flight safety and protect human lives and health. The lidar data were processed by a computer algorithm with the main focus on potential wind shear alerts and microburst alerts, guided by the recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. In parallel, the selected weather events were analyzed by the nearby located meteorological radar to utilize the strengths of both approaches. Additionally, an evaluation of the lidar capability to scan dynamics of aerosol content above the airport is presented.