Post Flight Analysis Using Numerical Weather Prediction Data, KLAPS

Numerical weather prediction data, in this study, were proposed to replace the meteorological measurement data acquired by widely used radiosonde, for the purpose of constructing atmospheric environment model applying to post flight analysis, especially evaluating aerodynamic performance in flight. KLAPS (Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System), the numerical weather model used in this study, is provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration every hour through the Internet and contains the meteorological information for a local region around the Korean peninsula, which is expected to give some advantage in the acquisition of regional and temporal variation of atmosphere state over the radiosonde measurement which has some drawbacks of acquiring data on only one point at one height while drifting via wind and taking some hours to climb up to 30 km high. The accuracy of KLAPS was verified by regenerating vertical distributions of atmospheric properties at the same locations and times as radiosonde measured and comparing them. Post flight analysis was carried out with an atmosphere environment model based on KLAPS and proved that the numerical weather model can provide an accurate atmospheric environment model enough to substitute the radiosonde measurement data.