Patent ID: 8868345

Claim:
A method of providing an approximate weather profile for an aircraft trajectory to a system configured to accept a number of weather data points for the aircraft trajectory, the method comprising: receiving the aircraft trajectory; extracting, by a processor, weather forecast data points along the received trajectory from a weather forecast database to form a subset of weather forecast data points; generating, by the processor, an approximated weather profile comprising a set of approximated data points unconstrained to the subset of weather forecast data points, where the approximated weather profile is fit to the subset of weather forecast data points and the set of approximated data points has fewer data points than the subset of weather forecast data points and no more than the number of weather data points the system is configured to accept, wherein generating the approximated weather profile comprises: a) generating, by the processor, a unique set of approximated data points; b) generating, by the processor, an approximated curve from the unique set of approximated data points; c) determining, by the processor, a residual between the subset of weather forecast data points and the approximated curve; and d) repeating a-d until the residual satisfies a predetermined threshold; and providing, by the processor, the set of approximated data points to the system.