The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is developing a prototype warning system to update aircraft about severe storms and turbulence as they fly across remote ocean regions. It will guide pilots away from intense weather, such as the thunderstorms that an Air France Airbus apparently encountered before its mysterious crash into the Atlantic last month.

The NCAR system, developed with funding from Nasa, combines satellite data and computer weather models with artificial intelligence techniques to identify and predict rapidly evolving storms and turbulence.