New NOAA research is showing how drones and other unmanned technologies can cost-effectively collect weather data in severe or remote environments and contribute to the improvement of weather and climate predictions.
New NOAA research is showing how drones and other unmanned technologies can cost-effectively collect weather data in severe or remote environments and contribute to the improvement of weather and climate predictions.
In a series of field campaigns supported by the U.S. Department of Energy at Oliktok Point, Alaska, a team of researchers led by Gijs de Boer, a CIRES scientist working at NOAA, have demonstrated the ability of unmanned aircraft systems, such as drones and tethered weather balloons, to operate in a harsh Arctic environment. These small, easily deployable platforms are proving that they’re capable of capturing data over tundra, ice and water which are important to improving the accuracy of models but unobtainable by other means.
“We’re showing that we have the ability to deploy these (unmanned) platforms in a very harsh environment for targeted field campaigns,” said de Boer. “We’re also supporting development efforts to make these technologies available to the broader scientific community.”
Results of the research were published in the June edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
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Image via NOAA.
