Preliminary Study on Low‐Level Turbulence Advisory System with Ku‐Band Broadband Radar at Shonai Airport, Yamagata Prefecture

SUMMARY During winter, at Shonai Airport located at the northern part of Japan, some low‐level turbulence caused by tornadoes and downbursts often interrupts takeoffs and landings. This is a primary source of economic loss. It is well‐known that a weather radar system is one of the most useful devices for observing various weather phenomena. However, it is difficult for conventional radar systems with a range resolution of several hundred meters and a temporal resolution of about 5 min to detect small‐scale phenomena with a horizontal scale of several hundred meters and duration of several minutes. We have been developing a meteorological Ku‐band broadband radar (BBR) that can detect small‐scale phenomena with high resolution (a range resolution of several meters and a temporal resolution of about 1 min). We constructed an advisory system with the BBR in order to support aircraft operation at this airport, and performed a comparison between BBR data and flight data recorder (FDR) data.