Over the past 15 years, the Federal Aviation Administration has developed a number of meteorological sensors, and developed algorithms for processing this data to automatically detect a number of atmospheric phenomena. In this talk, we will present representative examples of the sensors and data analysis approaches used and then consider their application to air quality assessment.  We will first consider salient characteristics of some of the atmospheric phenomena, which cause accidents and/or delays.  Examples of air carrier plane interactions with storms will be shown to illustrate some of the issues that arise in air traffic operations during adverse weather.  Contemporary systems to detect and predict: windshear phenomena and storm movement; surface winds and winds aloft over large areas; stratus cloud burn-off; wake vortex dynamics; and visibility prediction using distributed meteorological and imaging sensors will be described.  We will conclude by considering how the aviation weather sensing and analysis technology might be applied to contemporary applications in air quality assessment.