Lidar-Based Detection of Dangerous Meteorological Phenomena at the Bratislava Airport

Low level wind shear is a hazardous meteorological phenomena that may seriously threaten the safety of the aircraft during the phase of landing and take-off. Automated, lidar-based systems for wind shear detection and alerting offer indispensable help to pilots to avoid landing in risky weather circumstances. Due to the efforts of the company MicroStep-MIS, the Bratislava Airport is one of the few (~15) airports worldwide and the first in Central Europe that has been equipped with a Doppler lidar. This remote sensing tool monitors the surrounding air space in a circle with a radius of 6‒7 km with high temporal and spatial resolutions (~100 m horizontally, scan frequency: 2 minutes). The elevation angle of the lidar’s laser beam is set to a constant of 3°, which corresponds to the angle of the glide path of the landing aircraft.