Trapped mountain waves during a light aircraft accident

Abstract

On 31 July 2007 a fatal light aircraft crash occurred near Clonbinane, Victoria, Australia and the official investigation concluded that mountain wave turbulence was the likely cause. This study uses three-dimensional numerical modelling and linear wave theory to examine the dynamics of mountain waves during this turbulence event and their role in generating turbulence. Analysis of the observed environment and three-dimensional idealised simulations elucidate the occurrence of trapped mountain waves and their role in creating regions of enhanced turbulence in the vicinity of the aircraft accident. Specifically, these waves perturb layers of low dynamic stability in the upstream flow, promoting turbulence in those layers. A simple ensemble of these three-dimensional simulations is also used to assess the robustness of the model solutions and demonstrate the utility of highresolution ensembles for explicit mountain wave turbulence prediction.

The High Park fire: Coupled weather‐wildland fire model simulation of a windstorm‐driven wildfire in Colorado's Front Range

“…It has been implemented with both shared memory [ Clark et al ., ] and distributed memory [ Clark et al ., ] parallelization. It has previously been applied over 35 years to topics including terrain‐induced turbulence, cloud entrainment, orographic, winter, convective precipitation, desert meteorology, convective initiation, and most relevant to this work, mountain gravity waves and downslope windstorms [ Clark and Peltier , ; Peltier and Clark , ; Clark et al ., ; Parker and Lane , ] to explain their three‐dimensional aspects [ Clark et al ., ], along‐ridge flow [ Clark et al ., ] and variability [ Clark and Farley , ], temporal variability such as pulsing behavior [ Scinocca and Peltier , ], and requirements for operational simulation [ Sharman et al ., ].…”

Air-Traffic Restrictions at the Madeira International Airport Due to Adverse Winds: Links to Synoptic-Scale Patterns and Orographic Effects

“…For instance, mountain waves have been associated with extreme clear-air turbulence at cruise levels, causing severe structural damages to aircraft [3] or leading to several seriously injured passengers [4]. In the lower troposphere (below 3 km), mountain wave turbulence can be particularly hazardous and was the probable cause of a fatal light aircraft crash on 31 July 2007 in Australia [5]. On 2008, a commercial aircraft experienced severe turbulence when descending over the south-eastern coast of Iceland.…”

Using Schlieren Imaging and Radar Acoustic Sounding System for the Detection and Characterization of Close-in Air Turbulence

“…Turbulence is a well-known problem for aircraft as it can cause them to behave unpredictably and difficult to control and with potentially catastrophic consequences [1][2][3]. The impact of turbulence is most pronounced for small aircraft, most typically unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) [4].…”