By Jimoh Babatunde & Daniel Eteghe
LAGOS — The Nigerian Meteorological Agency, NIMET, yesterday said the installation of the Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, LLWAS, at the Lagos airport would greatly enhance air safety.

Director-General of NIMET, Dr. Anthony Anuforo, who spoke with newsmen in Lagos said the country was at an advanced stage of acquiring six multi-million naira Doppler weather radars for Abuja, Kano, Lagos, Yola, Port-Harcourt and Maiduguri airports.

He said when the Doppler weather radar are installed they would be integrated into NIMET’s system to ensure safer sky.

The wind shear alert systems, according to Anuforo, would complement the six Doppler weather radars for real time detection and tracking of hazardous weather around the country’s airports.

Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to intensity of the precipitation. Both types of data can be analyzed to determine the structure of storms and their potential to cause severe weather.

Speaking during a chat with newsmen, Anuforom said LLWAS would help a lot in averting accident that could result to loss of lives.

, adding that if the direction of wind occurs at the low level that aircraft could be affected thereby causing a crash.

He stressed that most plane crashes occurs during landing or take-off noting that with the installation of the LLWAS that pilots would be adequately informed about the direction of the wind in order for them to avoid being trapped into bad direction of the wind that could cause air accident.

“Pilots will be informed about the wind shear each time that they are flying, the pilot can avoid the situation of the wind as such will help the pilot to avoid a sudden drop in height in the airspace”

“Such situation can cause the aircraft to be brought down thereby colliding with structures at the airport so this wind shear is geared towards helping the pilot to avoid the area of the wind shear in order to avoid accident thereby enhancing safety” he added.

On the newly installed Low Level Wind Shear Alert System, the NIMET boss stated that the site acceptance test for the system was completed on July 12, 2011, noting that the system “is now operational at the Lagos airport”.

Wind shear refers to a change in wind speed or direction with height in the atmosphere.

Some amount of wind shear is always present in the atmosphere, but particularly strong wind shear Wind shear is important for the formation of tornadoes and hail.

“This achievement is truly historic because this is the first time in the history of aviation in Nigeria that this airport is equipped with this safety critical equipment”.

He recalled that the aviation industry in Nigeria witnessed its darkest period in its history between 2003 and 2006 when several aircraft accidents and incidents occurred resulting in loss of lives and series of injuries.