Air traffic at airports needs to be managed with caution and accurate inputs.
Digital advanced towers allow for remote observation of the sky at key locations such as airports. The data collected by these imagers help air traffic managers in their every-day tasks.
Reuniwatt developed software services enabling advanced analyses of the cloud cover. Our sky imagers provide a number of crucial insights for air traffic activities on live and upcoming cloud cover, such as METAR code, cloud movement, cloud type, and cloud base height.
Sky imagers and their corresponding features:
- Help air traffic controllers to identify critical weather phenomena at day and night time
- Improves the airport’s safety against potential weather hazards by observing the evolution of convective clouds
- Helps prepare for sudden changes in the weather and visibility
Sky InSight™ is an innovative and patented infrared sky imager developed by Reuniwatt for the continuous tracking of the cloud cover and its forecasting. The use of the infrared vision technology enables an excellent accuracy in cloud detection, while catching additional information on the cloud ceiling, 24/7. Sky InSight™ is to be coupled with Reuniwatt’s InstaCast™ software which enables advanced analysis of the images and forecasts of the cloud cover.
- 24/7 observation
- Cloud fraction, cloud-base height and cloud optical depth
- Cloud type classification
- Rain and fog detection
- Circumsolar detection
- Local irradiance mapping
Sky InSight™ sky imagers provide crucial insights for air traffic activities on live and upcoming cloud cover (credits: Meteoswiss)
Contrails observation
The aviation sector has been eager to find ways to reduce its environmental footprint. Condensation trails (or so-called “contrails”) have been identified as a contributor to flights’ impact on the climate. Research is now conducted to better understand the physical process underlying their formation.
High-quality sky images of such contrails are key to identifying the formation process and to follow the development on a large-scale and over long periods of time.
The final objective is to expand our knowledge on the formation of contrails to develop strategies to lower the impact of aviation on global climate.
Reuniwatt’s all-sky imagers are being used in multiple research projects which further study the development of condensation trails.