Regionalized Predictions of Aligned Updrafts and their Tuning for Planning Soaring Flights

Abstract

Persisting weather conditions with aligned lift allow for the most spectacular long-distance soaring in mainly straight and level flight.  This paper presents a regionalized approach towards predicting such meteorological conditions and their application to planning soaring flights.  Since the terrain slope is underestimated in numerical models due to smoothed orography, the cumulative area-elevation distribution is used to predict slope updrafts.  In addition, glider flights are analyzed to determine empirically for each region the absolute terrain slope.  Simulations of glider flights with tuned predictions of aligned and isolated updrafts demonstrate the potential of regionalized forecasts for the planning of long and fast soaring flights.