Identification

Title

Severe convectively induced turbulence hitting a passenger aircraft and its forecast by the ECMWF IFS model

Abstract

Atmospheric turbulence poses a major risk to aviation. Besides airframe damage, it can cause injuries of passengers and crew when encountered unexpectedly. The Singapore Airlines flight SQ321 was on its way from London to Singapore when severe turbulence was encountered over Myanmar on 21 May 2024. In this study, it is analyzed how well the turbulence was predicted by the turbulent eddy dissipation rate (EDR) forecast index of the ECMWF integrated forecasting system (IFS). It was found that ECMWF IFS was able to predict the convection and associated turbulence 24 hr in advance. The state‐of‐the‐art probabilistic EDR forecasts based on IFS ensemble members predicted probabilities for EDR between 10% and 40% over Myanmar with higher values for shorter lead time (8‐hr forecast). Individual members predicted EDR . Knowledge about the characteristics of convection in the IFS forecasts is required to make proper use of the probabilities determined from the ensemble for such cases.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7df6wjj

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-10T19:56:25.927736

Metadata language

eng; USA