Significance of space weather impacts on Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) data

Kurzfassung

Safe and efficient management of the constantly growing air traffic is an important task. For that reason, the international civil aviation organization (ICAO) approved Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) system is used to share information (e.g. position, altitude and speed) between aircraft and air traffic control units. This improves the situational awareness and visibility of aircraft but also the environmental impact and air space capacity. Both applications of ADS, Broadcast (B) and Contract (C), rely on satellite-based communication and navigation services, which can be significantly disturbed by space weather impacts (e.g. loss of the signal and position errors). Therefore, related impacts are also observed for ADS records especially during extreme space weather events. We will present such impacts for both, ADS-B and ADS-C, with first results from an analysis covering periods with solar flares and geomagnetic storms. We will also discuss the challenge of differentiating space weather impacts from other influences. Finally, we will give an outlook how monitoring these impacts could contribute to space weather services.