Inertial Drift Correction for Aircraft-Derived Wind Fields

During the last three decades, aircraft have assumed an increasingly important role as platforms for atmospheric measurement. Because of the nature of the wind measurement process, however, low-frequency winds remain susceptible to significant errors, which have their origin in the inertial navigation system (INS) of the aircraft. Computations are presented showing that the Electra, a state-of-the-art aircraft for meteorological measurements, experiences low-frequency wind measurement errors typically as large as 3 m s−1 in each component of the horizontal wind. Errors of this magnitude can produce can produce line-integral divergence errors of 10−4 s−1 in typical flight geometries. Use of the LORAN-C navigational information now received on the aircraft offers an order-of-magnitude reduction of errors from the INS.