Right before our eyes, we see the weather.

It can dictate what we do for the day. It can be life-altering. Or a simple change of plans. Imagine the time when we didn't have weather apps that would assist in our planning. Even before aviation, what we know of navigation came from sailing. In the early era of travel by sail, sailing vessels waited for weeks or more at a port due to violent storms or for favorable winds to carry their sails. The ability to foresee bad weather was a critical skill for any competent navigator. Signs of winds are also used by hunters of the far north, as it secured a settlement for the season. The Polar Inuits living in the farthest northwestern part of Greenland at the time of Knud Rasmussen's expeditions (Fifth Thule Expedition between 1921 and 1924) settled in an area where the strong winds from the north diminished just as it passed over the settlement.

Today, we rarely look upwards. It seems that weather apps give all the information we need in temperature, wind speed and direction, sky conditions, and possible precipitation. As we rely on our devices, online, and for some, the last part of the news for the weather forecast, perhaps the skill to observe weather seems less relevant today.

When thinking about how predictions were/are made by reading signs of weather in clouds and winds by hunters and sailors alike, pilots also have an expertise in predicting weather, and with a self-assuredness that comes with experience. As I was told by Pilot JPP as he looked up towards the sky, "See those clouds, there will be a storm. I can see a frontal zone in the lines. See those distinct lines made from clouds, there will a storm in 12 hours. I'll bet you on it." Sure enough, he was right.

Frontal systems, both cold and warm fronts, have recognizable signs as they approach and can be foreseen with keen observation and experience seeing the weather signs. The distinct lines Pilot JJP saw up in the sky were the 'tails' of the clouds, seemingly flying away off the ends. How this happens is from gravity. The gravity of the falling ice crytals that high up in altitude will slowly fall due to gravity, and as they fall, depending on the altitude, a feathery tail off the clouds form. From this, the 'old-timers,' the seasoned Pilots flying in Greenland will know there will be a weather movement.

Under Winds, Surfaces, and Inland Ice section, detailing Pilot experiences flying in Greenland, as the Pilot's advise, the local winds closer to the surface are not exactly the same at higher altitudes that are generally aligned with the flow of weather. Higher altitude winds can be observed in high-level cloud formations. More importantly, local systems have a flow in weather that is determined by the frictional forces in that distinct fjord system.

When Pilot's see weather, they look to a map of where they are flying. In the preflight, they analyze the weather report and look at the route's forecast. Particularly good advice from Pilot HP, "Don't go where your mind has not gone 30 minutes ago." With the changing weather, he may shorten it down to 10 minutes, and forward think during flight 10 mins ahead. Being ahead of the situation, is one way to understand the Aviation term Situational Awareness (SA). See Drop Down under 'Perceptions' Tab/section. In Greenland, I would emphasize, being weather aware or in other words, Weather Situational Awareness (WSA). This means, avoid losing your awareness in where you are in all phases of flying, of what is going on with the aircraft's performance, and in signs of weather movements as compared to what the reports have forecasted - ultimately, leads up to being ahead of what could happen.

Way back in ground school, Pilots were/are taught to 'visualize' the weather. Asking Pilot HP, with over 35 years experience flying in Greenland, what does ‘visualize’ mean, he stated, “Visualizing signs of weather in the sky is forming a picture of the visual forms, like, rain or snow or fog moving in, and in Greenland, I can see quite far in the distance towards the coast. Up in the sky, squall lines help predict bad weather, and with the mountains here, lenticular [clouds], which are almond-shaped, indicate mountain waves – something to stay away from since it can be turbulent.”

Not least, due to Greenland's Hostile Environment, Pilots have a planned alternate IF the weather turns. See the Drop Down Tab under 'Perceptions.' I clarify what a Defined EASA term 'Hostile Environment' related to Greenland's environment. With airports far apart, flying greater distances beyond the area terminal such as ferry flights from Illulisat down wouth to Nuuk (approximately 305 Nautical Miles) requires maintaining WSA throughout the entire flight. Question to ask would be:

What was the weather like currently, before and later in the day where I'm going (in Nuuk with a fuel stop in Kangerlususuaq)?

Helicopters fly at lower altitudes, flying weather at lower altitudes and on longer distances takes more analysis. A valid question for helicopter pilots is, “How I am supposed to use this weather information?” Side note, each chapter adds insight from the Meteorologist in Nuuk on Greenland Weather.

As many weather services report from weather stations, and satellites provide inputs to computer models for predictions, it is the processes that drive these complex weather systems that can be rather imprecise for longer ranges. Moreover, predictions for extreme phenomena in a short time and distance are elusive, especially in Greenland. However, the pilots will say, the weather today was not like it was yesterday. There have been frequent weather changes on a day-to-day basis, and they would add hourly.

Eyes-in-the-head-on the-body-flying-in-the air.

Making sense of the pilot’s perspective in how they perceive the weather they fly in has partly to do with visual perception in that the line-of-sight seen from our two eyes elevated by our body intercepts in the field of view, a field of view that is often taken for granted (1986, p. 205). Although our eyes are a sense organ to see, vision is a whole perceptual system, not a channel of sense (Gibson 1966). Furthermore, when using the eyes to see the environment, the perceptual capacities of the eyes do not lie in discrete anatomical parts of the body. The eyes do not sit in the body the way the mind could be considered to have a place in the brain. Thereby, when ‘looking at’ compared to ‘looking around,’ Gibson (1986, p. 205) asked the question, “With what does one see the world?” and took account of the way the eyes move in the visual field compared to the visual world. For Gibson (1986, 207), the visual field is a special kind of experience corresponding to points of view, whereas the visual world is an experience not corresponding to anything but ‘out there’ to ‘pick up’ information, being in the experience, in how the body is situated, shapes how we observe. For most of us, we see the environment, as Gibson (1986, 205) stated, with “the eyes-in-the-head-on-the-body-resting-on-the-ground.” Along these lines, pilots see with the eyes-in-the-head-on the-body-flying-in-the air. Seeing from the air, suspended in air, shapes how they perceive their flight environment, notably, how they see from a specific viewpoint from the machine.

Visual Percpetion - Pilot's Eye

James J. Gibson was an aviation enthusiast. He served in the US Army Air Force and researched the perception of aerial space, to name but one area (Gibson 1944, 1947). Gibson’s approach to the visual world came from his aviation studies (Lombardo 1987, p. 194). In a depiction of ‘outflow of optical array’ in a open environment projects a continuous flow of pattern overhead if seen from above. Gibson (1986, p. 123-125) refers to a ‘flier’s’ view from above that when flying overhead, with a particular focal point in sight whether the horizon, or from a 90° angle or from a 360° view, the flow of information is from the observer. Gibson’s relation to aviation is how I make sense of his writings. I refer to Gibson's affordances from his ecological approach to visual perception, but it was his aviation studies that drew me in. Gibson's explanation of distance perception involved a reconceptualization of the nature of environmental space that animals, including humans, visually perceive. What Gibson called the visual world (1950, p. 6) was where he considered "the possibility that there is literally no such thing as a perception of space without the perception of a continuous background surface." This ground theory of Gibson's was to distinguish from his air theory, which reconsidered what is in the background of objects. According to Gibson (1986, p.148), the 'space' of the airplane pilot above in the air was determined where he/she was by the ground and the horizon of the earth, not by the air the pilot flies in. It becomes clearer that Gibson’s ground theory needed an aerial perspective.

Gibson's ground theory is about surfaces that are in the background giving some form, which he calls layout. A layout has a place and objects, with features from which the observer perceives. But not in a two-dimensional space and not in depth perception. This is when Gibson's work gets interesting. For Gibson, this layout involves self-perception and is continually changing as the observer moves (Gibson 1986, p. 148), and from this angle, a view from the top or the side is what gives some distance from the object, a perspective to see distance. In this visual world, there is something more that is given to the observer, and it is the observer who ‘picks up’ the information that is perceived in the surroundings including the medium of the air and the surfaces and their layout.

It is in this relationship between the observer and the surroundings that Gibson’s approach to the visual perceptions holds grounds. From Gibson’s Theory of Affordances, the relationship is between what the environment affords the observer, such as the medium of air affords visibility in fog-free conditions, which gives optical information to perceive. As I’ve come to realize, the optical information to specify air when it is clear and visible is not obvious to a non-observer. Pilots, particularly helicopter pilots, have a specific visual perception in weather analysis of the surrounding light. They make decisions based on their weather analysis, they scan their surroundings in flight, and they continually make decisions about weather even on sky-clear days.

To perceive the weather affordances is not to classify an object, as Aviation textbooks on weather edify. Aviation textbooks classify clouds, represent sky coverage by dividing the sky and mentally represent images of the weather reports in ‘visualizing weather’. Although weather theory is taught in ground school, however, as pilot have informed, the more experience a pilot has, the more he/she can interpret and foresee the weather. Again, as I realized, it is from their visual perception, their way to perceive their weather surroundings, their pilot’s eye in what to look for (another nod to Gibson), that is at the core of this research. In an environment as vast as Greenland, visual perception relies on the pilot’s flight experiences, both in what the environment affords, as well as the enabling effect of the machine.

Gibson’s visual perception of the environment and his ecological approach are the guiding pathways, the conduit to describe what pilots see when they scan their surroundings, the air, the light – the atmosphere. Above all, flying is constant motion suspended in the air, and at that present moment, what is available to perceive is what affords the pilots in their decision making.

But what about the machine/helcopter?

Pilots also perceive their environment through the machine/helicopter when they fly in it. If there is information to be picked up from the environment of what technologies can afford, affordance can be applied to technology, as Asle H. Kiran postulates. Kiran (2015, p. 131) referred to technology as a material that “affords certain uses, and for this reason, technological mediations are constrained by the affordances of a technology.” Although Gibson did not formulate his ideas of affordance with technologies, Kiran refers to the affordances of the device, in both its materiality and what the device is capable of (Kiran 2015). Kiran (2015, p. 132 found the concept of affordance useful to explore how a handle, for instance, shapes our actions and behaviour, and the appeal was in “revealing how technologies have both an actuality and a potentiality.” Drawing on Don Ihde’s (1990) two-sidedness of technological mediation, Kiran[1] (2015, p. 131) puts forth the notion of an enabling-constraining structure utilizing Gibson’s affordances. In this enabling-constraining structure, technologies shape how we do things and, at the same time, change the way we do them.

In the enabling-constraining structure, in terms of the machine itself and the affordaces of it points to how the helicopter is constrained by the nature of flying in a defined hostile environment of Greenland. How then does the helicopter enable (shape) the way pilot’s fly and at the same time change the way pilots fly – in Greenland? The flight environment here is not secondary, but part of the pilot – machine – flight environment relation. These relations are referring to Ihde’s four dimensions of technological mediations bracketing the human – technology – world in the mediated relations. Ihde (1990) provides ways to view how technological mediations are represented. In a (pilot and machine) bracketed relation, the world would be how the pilot perceives the flight environment through the machine in an “embodiment relations” as the pilot flies the helicopter in the airspace. As the machine/helicopter has instruments for the pilot to read, in a bracketed (technology and world) with the pilot outside of the brackets forms a “hermeneutic relation” when the instrument panel is reading out the information for the pilot and the pilot interprets the readouts in this relation. This is all good information to hold to for later on.

To this point, there is a human-technology relation between the machine’s affordances and the pilot. In the flight environment, the helicopter affords passenger settlement flights, ambulance, cargo and specific charters such a pickup from the Inland Ice. However, as affordances have a two-sidedness, the machine is bounded by the flight conditions that affords the pilot in his/her decision-making. The pilot is enabled and constrained by the weather. Moreover, the machine is enabled and constrained by the flight environment. In these relations, it is a (pilot and machine) bracketed in an embodiment relation, in actuality, the flight environment is where the ‘mediating’ effect lies. Although I start with the machine as the point of analysis, the defined flight environment of hostile is where the analysis forms.

To restate, at the core of postphenomenology is the relations humans have with technologies. Through the work of Don Ihde, Peter-Paul Verbeek, Robert Rosenberger, and Asle H. Kiran, a field guide to postphenomenology (Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015) examines technologies in terms of relations, in which technologies mediate our world and becomes the starting point for analysis, as opposed to employing philosophical theories at the onset to technology. Postphenomenology starts with technologies themselves enabling relations that are not one-sided, but referring to Ihde, a ‘two-sidedness’ emerges in how technologies shape and reshape, and in this process for both humans and the world, it allows for specific ‘mediating’ effects (Ihde, 1990, p. 76).

What does it mean to perceive the weather?

Making sense of the pilot’s perspective in how they perceive the weather they fly in has partly to do with visual perception in that the line-of-sight seen from our two eyes elevated by our body intercepts in the field of view, a field of view that is often taken for granted (1986, p. 205). The 'two eyes are better than one' is because each eye is looking at an object from a different position. And they converge in a point of view as the eyes move through the surroundings. Although our eyes are a sense organ to see, vision is a whole perceptual system, not a channel of sense (Gibson 1966). Furthermore, when using the eyes to see the environment, the perceptual capacities of the eyes do not lie in discrete anatomical parts of the body. The eyes do not sit in the body the way the mind could be considered to have a place in the brain. Thereby, when ‘looking at’ compared to ‘looking around,’ Gibson (1986, p. 205) asked the question, “With what does one see the world?” and took account of the way the eyes move in the visual field compared to the visual world. For Gibson (1986, 207), the visual field is a special kind of experience corresponding to points of view, whereas the visual world is an experience not corresponding to anything but ‘out there’ to ‘pick up’ information. Being in the experience, in how the body is situated, shapes how we observe. For most of us, we see the environment, as Gibson (1986, 205) stated, with “the eyes-in-the-head-on-the-body-resting-on-the-ground.” Along these lines, pilots see with the eyes-in-the-head-on the-body-flying-in-the air. Seeing from the air, suspended in air, shapes how they perceive their flight environment, notably, how they see from a specific viewpoint from the machine.

What happens seconds before pilots take off into the weather? They take one more look at the windsock to see if the wind direction has changed. Although not possible for every take off, the ability to foresee weather or anticipate bad weather is how pilots perceive their environment, which comes from their 'know-how' of what to look for in the weather. But it's more than this. The helicopter itself flies in the atmosphere. The most important factor in the atmosphere that affects the helicopter's ability to perform depends on the density of the air with pressure differences that affect the density (denseness or thickness). In other words, all around us are parcels of air, and where we are in the atmosphere, closest to the ground or up 7000 feet, the weight of air is thinner upwards and denser on the ground. We breathe easier on ground.

As the helicopter enables flying, there is something more subtle that I hope comes across with these pilots who fly in Greenland, and this point is important for how to approach the following chapters and sections. Along with the pilot's short stories on the weather, from the pilots' perspective, it invokes the physics of weather. When they say, as the humid warm air moving over the cold surface of the sea ice, the warm air cools when it rises over the cold air, and as a result, air becomes visible in forms of fog or low clouds; they are also saying they might not be able to see what's in front of them, but can maybe fly at lower altitudes or not at all. As pilots scan, they are perceiving what is visible with the current conditions, enabled by the machine. In other words, they perceive what is available from affordances of the machine and the surroundings both in the surfaces and above.

All the chapters merge the elements of physics of weather along with the machine's relation to the flight environment and the pilot's short stories on weather and commentary on the machine/helicopter, as both weather and machine are mediated by the flight environment - known in the Aviation world as Flying into Weather.

As I’ve realized after spending time with the pilots at the various settlement bases in Greenland, pilots with local knowledge of the weather allow for a level of preparedness. With an underscoring in preparedness that of weather awareness, or in Aviation terms, weather situational awareness. The worthwhile analysis solidifies the broader concern of this research. That is, weather situational awareness comes from what is perceived in the environment; when pilots fly, they perceive the environment through making good weather decisions, which comes from past experiences flying in it, both in good and bad weather.

Preparedness in the Real

Heavily reiterated in aviation is preparing for the flight(s). Prepare for enough fuel, prepare for adverse weather, prepare for diversions, prepare a survival kit, and so on. In an instant, a failure occurs; there is an automatic process depending on the situation, to either reach for the controls or monitor the situation to see what the machine is not doing. The pilot keeps the machine in the air; his body heat rises, firm contact with the controls, and all senses on high alert. In a single-pilot operation[8], it’s full-on concentration. One main reason Pilot MP was able to focus and manually fly the machine comes from his training and experiences. When the main instrument screens went black, he drew on his past training and experiences. He was prepared for the worst-case scenario that was shaped from the days he flew the B212, the helicopter that was heard up and down the coast for over 40 years. The rugged utility helicopter that was replaced by a newer, technologically advanced helicopter.

We lament the passing of an era, retiring an older machine, closing of airports, and fragmented knowledge of local weather. We can also be reluctant to accept there are newer machines to fly, new airports to develop, and knowledge of local weather can be learned. Yet, our relationship with our past is part of our complicated thinking of time informed by a series of experiences, an argument made by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945) that our experiencing of the present comes from an encapsulated ‘whole past’ where there is an awareness of one’s stream of experiences unfolding in the present. As I talk with the pilots flying in Greenland, I’m attuned to their experiences of how they were able to avoid a near accident, recover from a failure, and divert from a plan – their approach to flying comes from their experiences culminating up to that moment. This seems to be wildly separated – pilots and philosophy – but they connect through the lines of being human in a changing technological world. Pilot MP above, through a series of experiences flying for over 18 years, retained not only in past experiences, but his whole body also absorbed his experiences. He didn’t panic or freeze or hold the controls in a death grip, knuckles white and almost paralysed with shock, as it can happen. Looking at the black screens, how Pilot MP handled the automation failure was in relation to his experiences, where what was implicit to him (unconsciously in his body) was gradually becoming explicit as he took control and manually flew the machine – this retained experience reinforces Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) point that one’s experiences are linked to the present situation. Read what happened to the Pilot under section Flying in the blue hour.

Gibson’s (1986, p. 140) theory of affordances questions the information available in an ‘value-rich’ environment to perceive. For pilots flying in Greenland, one element of a ‘value-rich’ environment is in the light that diffuses 1 hour before sunrise or after sunset, known as civil dawn and civil dusk. In this hour, the natural light contours the terrain, stars brighten, and the horizon’s range is fully visible, enabling an aviation definition for night flying (EASA Rules for Night Flying). Because Gibson’s (1986, p. 141) theory of affordances “points two ways” – specific to the observer and the information to avail is specific to the affordance, it has the potential to be employed in other disciplines. On a technological level, utilizing Gibson’s affordance (Kiran 2015), Flight Simulator's simulated environment affords another level of preparedness in simulating training procedures specific to what is directly trained, whether a night instrument procedure or a dual engine failure.

As stated under the About page, the question that begins and follows through this thesis is, what does it mean to perceive the environment – simulated and real?

Below is an image of the author flying with virtual reality (VR) goggles in the H125 Simulator.