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Aviation Weather

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NOAA’s Role: 

NOAA delivers tailored weather forecasts for both the commercial and private aviation industries to route planes around dangerous weather every day. NOAA aviation meteorologists work alongside FAA, Department of Defense and private sector colleagues to ensure that any rapid changes in weather are quickly communicated to pilots in the sky.  NOAA’s 122 Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) provide consistent, timely, and accurate weather information for both domestic and international airspace and forecast aviation hazards. The WFOs issue more than 4,000 aviation weather forecasts each day and provide 575 airports with almost 2,500 aviation weather forecasts and nearly 1,300 in-flight forecasts daily.   – Aviation Weather Forecasting: A History of Enhancing Air Flight Safety.  NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) products pertinent to Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC), which may be found on aviationweather.gov, include:

  • Meteorological Aerodrome Reports (METARs):. Provide hourly weather observations at many airports including the observed cloud and visibility conditions.

  • Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF): WFOs issue forecasts that are valid for 24-30 hours for an area within 5 statute miles of the center of the airport. These forecasts include information on wind, visibility, cloud cover and the type of precipitation expected.

  • Airmen’s Meteorological Information (AIRMETs) are weather advisories potentially hazardous to all flights but do not meet the criteria for a SIGMET, or Significant Meteorological Information. AIRMETS are issued for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR)/Mountain Obscuration, Turbulence, and Icing four times per day. Graphical AIRMETs, or G-AIRMETS, are a graphical snapshot of the AIRMET information.

  • NOAA also aggregates and geographically plots Pilot Reports (PIREPs) which provide in situ information on turbulence and icing.
There are nine International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAACs) that cover the 150 volcanoes across the continental U.S., Hawaii, and Alaska. NWS Meteorologists in these centers monitor the status of active volcanoes, track volcanic ash in the atmosphere during eruptions, and issue advisories and warnings for airborne ash and ashfall. The Washington VAAC hosts Current Volcanic Ash Advisories using NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) data. More information can be found on NWS’s Volcanic Ash and Ashfall webpage.

The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) also provides information related to the degradation of communications, satellite navigation errors, and radiation hazards to the aviation community. See the related NOAA by the Numbers: “Space Weather” section for more information.

Why it Matters:

Exposure of the U.S. Population
In 2024 nearly 52% of American adults flew at least once:
Historically, aviation weather has been a major contributor to flight delays and cancellations with high costs incurred to both passengers and airlines:

  • During FY2023, the number of departure delays of at least 15 minutes at Core 30 airports (major airports in the United States monitored by the FAA) rose by 50.6% over the previous fiscal year to 153,312. Over half of these delays were weather related.  – Federal Aviation Administration (2024, May). Air Traffic by the Numbers

  • Data on National Airspace System (NAS) delays and cancellations collected between 2003 and 2015 revealed that, when factoring weather’s impact on the NAS delays and aircraft arriving late delays, weather was responsible for 32.6% of the total number of delay minutes recorded. Additionally, the data revealed extreme weather to be the greatest contributor of airline cancellations at 42% of the total cancellations. – Goodman, C. J., & Small Griswold, J. D. (2019). Meteorological Impacts on Commercial Aviation Delays and Cancellations in the Continental United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 58(3), 479-494. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-17-0277.1 

  • The total direct cost (including delays and cancellation costs to passengers and airlines) of a lightning strike that occurred in 2013 to the Thurgood Marshall International Airport was $1,887,850 (2013$). – Ding, W., & Rakas, J. (2015). Economic Impact of a Lightning Strike–Induced Outage of Air Traffic Control Tower: Case Study of Baltimore–Washington International Airport. TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD, 2501(1), 76-84. https://doi.org/10.3141/2501-10
One study used U.S. civil aviation flight data in 2019 to analyze the resilience recovery of civil airport infrastructure (measured through the length of flight delays) under weather extremes–including rainfall, low temperature, snow depth, and crosswind. On average, extreme weather caused the delay of 25 flights by at least 200 minutes with a peak flight delay of 228.46 minutes. Most civil airport infrastructures (78%) recovered within 900 minutes of extreme weather, however, some civil airports took as long as 1,300 minutes to recover. – Huang, X., Yang, L. Z., Wu, K., Tan, C. S., Qi, L., & Chen, Y. (2025). Study on the resilience recovery of civil airport infrastructure under weather extremes. Natural Hazards, 121(1), 1143-1163. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-024-06814-8

Historically, aviation weather has been a major contributor to the number of aviation accidents and fatalities:

    • General (defined as private and non-commercial) aviation accidents result in more fatalities than any other aviation category within the United States. A comprehensive spatiotemporal analysis of fatal weather-related general aviation accidents from 1982 through 2013 revealed weather to be a contributing factor in 35% of cases. These accidents are responsible for nearly 100 fatalities per year in the United States. – Fultz, A. J., & and Ashley, W. S. (2016). Fatal weather-related general aviation accidents in the United States. Physical Geography, 37(5), 291-312. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723646.2016.1211854

 

    • Data from the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Aviation Accident database between 1975 and 2011 revealed 1,316 aviation fatalities and 559 aviation accidents in the United States due to winter precipitation. The number of annual winter-precipitation-related aviation fatalities dropped over this period from a high of 139 fatalities in 1982 to a low of 4 fatalities in 2010. Similarly, the number of annual winter-precipitation-related aviation accidents dropped over this period from a high of 45 accidents in 1978 to a low of 3 accidents in 2010. Annual fatality counts are highly sensitive to large events, however, most winter-precipitation related crashes involved smaller aircraft, with an average of 2.35 fatalities per crash. Overall, 49% of winter precipitation-related aircraft fatalities and 33% of crashes occurred during meteorological winter (the months of December through February).  – Black, A. W., & Mote, T. L. (2015). Characteristics of Winter-Precipitation-Related Transportation Fatalities in the United States. Weather Climate and Society, 7(2), 133-145. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-14-00011.1 

 

    • Thunderstorms, which can cause violent turbulence, hail and windshear, pose extreme hazards to light aircraft and often result in fatalities. Data from the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Aviation Accident database revealed 141 thunderstorm-related general aviation accidents (all civil aviation excluding passenger/freight transport) in the United States over the period between 1996 and 2014–accidents which carried a 71% fatality rate. On average, 7 aviation accidents occurred every year and the number of aviation accidents did not decrease in frequency during this period. – Boyd, D. D. (2017). In-Flight Decision-Making by General Aviation Pilots Operating in Areas of Extreme Thunderstorms. AEROSPACE MEDICINE AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE, 88(12), 1066-1072. https://doi.org/10.3357/AMHP.4932.2017 

 

    • From 2000 to 2020, approximately 67% of the weather-related severe aviation accidents in the United States were caused by meteorological factors like relative humidity, temperature, visibility, and cloud coverage. – Nita, I. A., Radu, C., Cheval, S., & Birsan, M. V. (2024). Aviation accidents related to atmospheric instability in the United States (2000-2020). Theoretical and Applied Climatology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04968-w 

 

    • Between 2010 and 2022, 25% of aircraft accidents (375 in total) with a passenger capacity of at least 12 people were caused by adverse weather conditions worldwide. The most significant weather events contributing to aircraft accidents were low visibility (26%) and wind (26%). When comparing the 12-year period of 2010-2022 to the previous 12-year period of 1998-2010, the proportion of weather-related aircraft accidents increased by 9% (from 16% to 25%). – Akay, T., & Tarhan, C. (2024). The effect of global warming and climate changes on aircraft accidents between 2010-2022. AIRCRAFT ENGINEERING AND AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY, 96(2), 215-222. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-03-2023-0081

 

  • Data from 1967-2010 showed that, over time, commercial- and civil air-transport had become an ultra-safe system with one catastrophic incident per 10 million flights (i.e., distinct take-offs to destination landings sequences) worldwide. However, while accidents became increasingly rare over this period, the percentage of accidents which were weather related increased from 40% to 50%. Weather-caused accidents at the cruising altitude were mainly the result of turbulence (66%); low visibility was a factor in 67%, 53%, 52%, and 46% of weather-caused accidents, respectively, in the take-off, climb, approach and landing phases; and rain was a factor in 34% of the weather-caused accidents during the landing phase.   Mazon, J,  Rojas, J.i., Lozano, M., Pino, D., Prats, X.,  and Miglietta, M.M.. (2017). Influence of meteorological phenomena on worldwide aircraft accidents, 1967-2010. METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS.  25(2); 236-245. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.1686

Historically, lightning storms have been shown to be the cause of many airport outages:

  • Over 5,500 National Airspace System (NAS) lightning-triggered facility outages (including full interruptions, partial equipment or system failure, reduced service, and informational interruption) occurred between 1983-2019. The top 20 airports with the greatest number of lightning-induced outage incidents suffered 987 total outages (49 outages on average). – He, Y., Lindbergh, S., Graves, C., & Rakas, J. (2021). Airport Exposure to Lightning Strike Hazard in the Contiguous United States. Risk Analysis, 41(8), 1323-1344. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13630    

Volcanic ash is a hazard to aircraft because it can cause a degraded engine performance (including flameout), loss of visibility, and failure of critical navigational and operational instruments.