SatCAT: Using satellite data to improve safety and routing efficiency in the aviation industry.

对于商业航空运输来说，湍流是一个重要的安全考虑因素：由湍流引起的坠机极其罕见，但乘客和机组人员受伤的情况每周都会发生。它经常在没有预警的情况下袭击，特别是“晴空乱流”，这是非常难以察觉的，这意味着安全带的标志可能会被关闭，人们会在机舱内走动。在这种情况下，人们可能会被抛下，在这个过程中受伤，任何松散的物品（比如笔记本电脑）都可能成为危险的弹丸。因此，航空公司和飞行员在规划航线时要避开潜在的乱流区域，一旦在空中，如果他们怀疑前方有严重的乱流，就会尽可能改变航线。然而，这依赖于足够的预警：如果你不知道湍流的存在，就不可能避免它。天气预报提供湍流警报，但这些警报往往是不准确的——在不存在湍流的情况下显示湍流，或者在存在湍流的情况下无法预测湍流。同样地，从驾驶舱里很难探测到湍流。晴空湍流是看不见的，而与风暴相关的湍流很难破译。一个特别的挑战是计算出飞机需要在多远的地方避开风暴云，以保持远离乱流。在这项研究中，我的目标是增加我们对湍流的认识，以帮助为飞行员提供如何避免风暴湍流的新指导。我将开发一种新方法，利用最新的气象卫星技术从太空探测湍流，使更好的飞行计划和帮助航空公司避免湍流：保证乘客的安全，并通过减少因不存在的湍流而不必要的飞行计划更改来节省资金。通过与英国气象局和雷丁大学的天气预报专家合作，我将努力提高我们预测湍流的能力，使航空公司不仅可以避免飞行中的湍流，还可以在起飞前更好地提前规划无湍流的航线。

Turbulence is an important safety consideration for commercial air transport: Crashes caused by turbulence are exceedingly rare, but injuries to passengers and crew are a weekly occurrence. It can often strike without warning, particularly "clear air turbulence" that is very difficult to detect, meaning that the seat belt sign may be switched off and people will be moving about the cabin. In this situation, people can be thrown off their feet, injuring themselves in the process, and any loose items (such as laptops) can become hazardous projectiles.Airlines and pilots therefore plan routes that avoid potential areas of turbulence and - once in the air - will alter course whenever possible if they suspect severe turbulence is ahead. This, however, relies on adequate warning being available: It is impossible to avoid turbulence if you do not know it is there. Weather forecasts provide turbulence warnings, but these are often inaccurate - showing turbulence where none exists or failing to forecast turbulence when it does exist. Similarly, it is very hard to detect turbulence from the cockpit. Clear air turbulence is invisible and storm-associated turbulence is hard to decipher. A particular challenge is to work out by how far an aircraft needs to avoid storm clouds in order to remain clear of turbulence.In this fellowship, I aim to increase our knowledge of turbulence in order to help to provide new guidance to pilots on how to avoid storm turbulence. I will produce a new method that will detect turbulence from space using the latest weather satellite technology, enabling better flight planning and helping airlines to avoid turbulence: Keeping their passengers safe and saving money by reducing the need for unnecessary flight plan changes around non-existent turbulence. By working with weather forecasting experts at the Met Office and University of Reading I will seek to improve our ability to forecast turbulence, allowing airlines not only to avoid turbulence in-flight but also to allow better advance planning of turbulence-free routes before take-off.