Quality assessment of Automatic Dependent Surveillance Contract (ADS-C) wind and temperature observation from commercial aircraft

Aircraft observations of wind and temperature are very important for upper air meteorology. In this article, the quality of the meteorological in
formation of an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contract (ADS-C) message is assessed. The ADS-C messages are received at air traffic control cen
tres for surveillance and airline control centres for general aircraft and dispatch management. Comparison against a global numerical prediction
(NWP) model and Mode-S Enhanced Surveillance (EHS) derived wind and temperature observations is performed. Almost 16 thousand ADS-C reports with
meteorological information were compiled from the Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) database. The length of the data set is 76 days.
The wind and temperature observations are of good quality when compared to the global NWP forecast fields from the European Centre for Medium-Ran
ge Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Comparison of ADS-C wind and temperature observations against Mode-S EHS derived observations in the vicinity of Am
sterdam Airport Schiphol shows that the wind observations are of similar quality and the temperature observations of ADS are of better quality th
an those from Mode-S EHS. However, the current ADS-C data set has a lower vertical resolution than Mode-S EHS . High vertical resolution can be a
chieved by requesting more ADS-C when aircraft are ascending or descending, but could result in increased data communication costs.