Some airliners have onboard weather radar to detect stormy conditions ahead. This works by bouncing radio waves off raindrops to detect how fast they are moving. It cannot see clouds or wind, but the motion of the rain highlights turbulent conditions ahead. This airborne weather radar is now being utilised to produce crowdsourced weather maps.
This year, two of the biggest players in the weather radar market, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell Aerospace, are both working on software to allow planes to share radar data. They already share information on wind, temperature and turbulence via systems such as Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (Amdar), which collates automated reports from thousands of planes.
Sharing radar data would allow radar images from the participating aircraft to be stitched together into a weather map in real time.
A pilot could then see the weather radar view from another aircraft 1,000 miles ahead on the same route, and plan a flight path around any storms accordingly. Even aircraft not fitted with weather radar would be able to use the map and get the safety benefits.
The shared data might also prove useful for meteorologists. At present, weather conditions out at sea are only known from satellite images or sensors such as lightning trackers. Sharing weather radar information turns every airliner into a flying weather station.
The Rockwell Collins patent for sharing dates from 2004, but the idea has only become feasible recently with the advent of broadband satellite communications for aircraft.
