ACARS

The Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) is managed by Aeronautical Radio, Inc., (ARINC) and is used by airlines to transmit a variety of proprietary air-to-ground communications. NOAA’s Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL) uses the term ACARS to designate automated weather reports from commercial aircraft. These data are routed by several cooperating airlines to FSL, which decodes and quality-controls the data. Data for this instrument are no longer being collected by ARM; however, current data are available at the MADIS archive.