Large Eddy Simulation on Horizontal Convective Rolls that Caused an Aircraft Accident during its Landing at Narita Airport

Abstract

An accident occurred when an aircraft landed at Narita International Airport, Japan, on 20 June 2012. The aircraft encountered rapid changes of winds together with strong turbulence, although the weather was fair. In the present study, a two‐domain nested regional weather prediction models are used. The results in the outer domain show that southwesterly winds associated with a synoptic extratropical cyclone were locally accelerated to the southwest of the airport resulting in strong vertical shear. The simulation in the inner domain reproduces horizontal convective rolls, which are similar to those observed by a Doppler lidar at the airport. The wind velocity component parallel to the runway had a spatial variation of about 10 m s −1. The present approach using a large eddy simulation is useful for clarifying environments and features of horizontal convective rolls and forecasting low‐level wind shear associated with them, which can be a significant risk for aircraft.

High‐resolution simulation of a severe case of low‐level windshear at the Hong Kong International Airport: Turbulence intensity and sensitivity to turbulence parameterization scheme

“…LES study for meteorological applications have been considered in a number of studies in the literature. Ito et al (2020) and Shimoyama et al (2013) have considered applications of LES for a couple of airports in Japan. The former tried to use LES to explain an incident of the aircraft at the airport.…”