Abstract
Over 8000 weather-related aviation accidents in the USA from 2000 to 2020 are investigated, in order to find possible connections between atmospheric instability and severe aviation accidents – defined here as events that recorded serious or fatal injuries. We use the bootstrapped median values for multiple meteorological parameters extracted from North America Regional climate reanalysis for each accident cause. To check the possibility of predicting severe accidents, we applied a logistic regression model containing several meteorological variables as predictands. Results show that approximately 67% of the weather-related severe aviation accidents can be explained by meteorological parameters like relative humidity, temperature, visibility or total cloud fraction. The monthly frequency of weather-related accidents shows a 6-months peak, corresponding to the peak of the convective season in North America. Older pilots (> 60 years) are more likely to be involved in a severe accident during adverse weather, while flight experience seems less relevant. Our study aims to better understand which meteorological variables are more significant in the outcome of severe aviation accidents during adverse meteorological conditions, and to investigate the roles of age and experience in pilots' response during extreme weather.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to NTSB for kindly providing the aviation accidents data related to weather conditions at no charge, and we acknowledge NCEP for creating and updating the NARR reanalysis. We thank the anonymous referee for the comments and suggestions that improved the clarity of the original manuscript.
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IAN: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, software, writing the original draft. CR: data curation, writing (review and editing). SC, MVB: supervision, validation, writing (review and editing).
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Nita, IA., Radu, C., Cheval, S. et al. Aviation accidents related to atmospheric instability in the United States (2000–2020). Theor Appl Climatol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04968-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-024-04968-w