Final Report: The AFRL High Altitude Turbulence Program

Abstract

*In 2002, the Air Force Weather Agency did not have a centralized capability to forecast high altitude turbulence (HAT) for high altitude reconnaissance resources. There was a pressing need for increased basic knowledge of HAT and improved forecast technologies. In FY2004, the Air Force Research Laboratory incorporated the HAT effort into its optical turbulence program at the Hanscom AFB Research Site, due to the many commonalities in the underlying physics and mathematics. Between FY2004 and FY2007, the final year of 6.2 funding, the laboratory examined many existing HAT forecast techniques and gathered a large amount of experimental data of HAT, from airborne and from balloon-borne instruments. These data served to assist in the basic understanding of the HAT problem, and provided verification data for forecast models. This report describes the models that were investigated and the data obtained to support the work, the methodology used to determine the cause of the HAT problem, the basic research that was supported by AFOSR for this problem, and the mitigation strategies. The paper contains considerations regarding the transition of forecast models to the Air Force Weather Agency and recommendations to the high altitude aircraft community for the mitigation of the unforecast HAT.