Tamdar Flying Weather Sensor

On a cold winter's night, airliners pack a Minneapolis hangar. Some are here for service, others outfitted for a NASA research project to bring pilots and forecasters better weather information. >> CHVATAL: This main component here is the TAMDAR probe. And this probe section sticks out of the side of the aircraft. >> A team led by researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, partnered with Mesaba Airlines to test the weather instrument known as TAMDAR. Technicians installed the one-and-a-half pound Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reports sensor on 63 Saab 340 aircraft. >> CHVATAL: The basic function of this probe is to measure humidity, pressure, temperature, winds aloft, icing, turbulence and location, time and altitude from the built-in GPS. >> The instrument measures and collects weather conditions as the planes fly their regular routes. Those observations are sent, with the help of a satellite antenna installed on the top of the aircraft, to ground computers which process and distribute up-to-date weather information to pilots, forecasters and those who brief pilots. >> DANIELS: Armed with this information, pilots can navigate their aircraft more safely. They can avoid turbulence and icing, for instance. >> A year-long test of the sensor proved it makes a difference, not only to pilots, but to meteorologists. >> DANIELS: If you talk to any of the local forecasters at the National Weather Service offices located throughout the whole middle third of the country who have been using this data for their forecasting, they are ecstatic. They are able to show that, with this data, they can accurately predict the onset of storms, storm times, whether or not the storm is going to have ice or snow or rain or fog... >> The company that built the instrument is now working to expand the TAMDAR-equipped fleet to provide coverage over the entire continental U.S.