After you’ve buckled your seat belt and made sure your tray table is in the upright and locked position, you can feel pretty certain that for the most part your flight will be humdrum.
Nevertheless, there are atmospheric conditions that can make aviation hazardous – thunderstorms and volcanic ash are two. And researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and elsewhere are working to improve knowledge of these potentially flight-interrupting events by using data from weather satellites.
The effort is an innovative one, said Wayne Feltz, a scientist at the UW-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center, which leads the Wisconsin effort, because it is designed to make satellite data routine and automated in aviation.