Patent ID: 8433506

Claim:
A method of providing weather information for an aircraft trajectory to a flight management system (FMS), the method comprising: a) receiving the aircraft trajectory; b) selecting weather data points comprising both temperature and wind data along the received aircraft trajectory from a weather database to form a trajectory subset of weather data points; c) generating a reference trajectory temperature profile from the trajectory subset of weather data points; d) selecting, by a ground station, a unique subset of temperature data from the trajectory subset to define a temperature subset of the weather data points; e) generating, by the ground station, a temperature profile along the aircraft trajectory from the temperature subset; f) comparing, by the ground station, the temperature profile to the reference trajectory temperature profile to determine an error between the reference trajectory temperature profile and the temperature profile; g) repeating, by the ground station, d-f until the error satisfies a predetermined error threshold; h) identifying, by the ground station, the weather data points from the trajectory subset that correspond to the unique subset of temperature data satisfying the predetermined error threshold; and i) sending, by the ground station, to the FMS the identified weather data points.