Airborne in situ measurements of turbulence

Airborne in situ measurements of turbulence play a key role in mitigating the operational turbulence problem for aviation. These measurements can be used for warning following aircraft, used in turbulence forecasting and nowcasting algorithms, and assisting in the development and verification of those algorithms. Furthermore, in situ measurements are useful in furthering the phenomenological understanding of turbulence in terms of climatologies and case studies. In this chapter, we focus on energy dissipation rate (EDR) calculations for both homogeneous and inhomogeneous turbulence and describe the connection between EDR and aircraft vertical acceleration response. The chapter concludes with a simulation analysis comparing EDR estimates from vertical velocity, from scaling the root mean square of the velocities and accelerations, and from scaling peak accelerations.