Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology awarded for the second time – idea to use aircraft condensation trails to make measurements of atmospheric wind and humidity wins 25 thousand Euro

The Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology has been awarded for the second time. During the Annual Meeting of the European Meteorological Society currently taking place in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Board of the Harry Otten Foundation announced that Olivier Boucher has won the prize of 25 thousand Euro for his idea “Probing the Upper Atmosphere by watching aircraft.”

The idea is to use a simple all-sky camera to observe condensation trails from aircraft, i.e. those long clouds that sometimes form behind flying planes. This detection can be greatly facilitated if you know where to look for them, using an aircraft message receiver that gives the location of all aircraft flying above the receiver.

The camera measures the width and length of the contrails and their changes over time. These images provide valuable information about humidity and wind that can be used to improve numerical weather model forecasts. Such information, which will be taken mostly in clear air, will complement information from satellite observations of clouds and their motion.

This proposal was evaluated as scientifically sound, technically feasible and highly innovative. Its potential to improve the quality of global weather forecasts would benefit all users of weather forecasts.

Olivier is a research director of the French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique since 2011, after spending 6 years with the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom.

He has also been working for many years with the IPCC.

The winner of the prize has been selected out of three finalists. The other two participants in the final round received 2500 Euro for the following ideas:

Rogiros Tapakis and Alexandros Charalambides (Cyprus University of Technology) for their idea to use a solar measurements from a dense network of photovoltaic cells to help electrical power generation companies manage the balance of sources of power.

Tim Hewson and Florian Pappenberger (Eureopean Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) for their idea to predict small scale flash floods using forecast from much larger scale global weather prediction models.

Overall the jury received 13 applications for the prize from different European countries, Israel, and Cuba. The Harry Otten Prize is awarded every two years. More information is available at the website at www.harry-otten-prize.org.

According to Richard Anthes, Chairman of the Board of the Harry Otten Foundation: The finalists for this round of the Harry Otten Prize contributed outstanding examples of innovative ideas that have the potential for applications to benefit society.”

Harry Otten, founder of the Harry Otten Foundation, said “I am delighted that the prize has been awarded for such an innovative proposal. Using photographs from the condensation trails from aircraft can bring in new and valuable information to improve global weather forecasts, which will benefit all societies in the world.”