Meteorological service for civil aviation: problems and ways of their solution

Meteorological support of flights (MSF) of civil aviation (CA) is one of the types of support of flights and is carried out in order to ensure the safety, regularity and efficiency of flights by providing the required meteorological information to users of airspace, bodies engaged in air traffic management. The international and national regulation of the MSF CA is based on the recommendations of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and ICAO as well as the Federal Aviation Regulations and other regulatory and guidance documents. In the Russian Federation the MSF CA is performed by "Aviamettelekom of Roshydromet", which is a regional organization with a regional-distributed network of structural units including a head office and 15 branches. Aerodrome meteorological authorities conduct the direct meteorological support. At present, there are a number of problems in the MSF CA, that is availability of the regulatory acts and rules allowing the use by aviation consumers of meteorological information supplied outside the officially authorized providers of meteorological information; insufficient technical provision with modern meteorological equipment of aerodrome meteorological authorities; obsolescence of existing technical means to carry out meteorological observations and supply meteorological information; lack of qualified meteorologists; divisions redundancy of "Aviamettelekom of Roshydromet"; in a number of regions of the Russian Federation there is a lack of reliable methods for weather forecasts and hazardous weather phenomena for aviation; insufficient coverage of the country's territory with a network of meteorological radar and aerological stations. The main ways of improving the MSF CA must be guided in several directions simultaneously: improvement of the legislative and regulatory frameworks of the MSF CA; the development and introduction of modern technical means for carrying out meteorological observations and measurements; development and implementation of computer-aided forecasting on the basis of modern numerical methods and prediction techniques; the centralization of the forecasting processes and sharing weather data.