Autonomous Meteorological Measurement System

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: NOAA and the National Weather Service maintain an immense network of automated maritime, surface, and upper-air observing stations throughout the world and at great expense. These automated stations provide regularly updated data for both short-term weather prediction and long-term climate models. Maritime and surface observations occur as frequently as every 10 to 20 minutes, and upper-air observations often occur only once or twice per day. Despite this vast network, NOAA requires more weather observations to realize significant improvements in weather and climate models, especially in data-sparse regions. To meet this need, Creare proposes the an autonomous meteorological data collection and distribution system, the Drone Sonde System, comprising a lightweight, low-cost unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) capabilities and a base station for autonomous recovery and recharging of the UAS. The UAS carries an array of sensors and regularly profiles the atmosphere from the surface to 25,000 feet. In Phase I, we will demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through design, analysis, and testing. In Phase II, we will develop, test, and validate a prototype of the system and demonstrate its performance in a field test.SUMMARY OF ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Our proposed system will enable distributed deployment of a low-cost VTOL UASs for frequent measurement of atmospheric conditions in data-sparse regions, as well as transmission of the information to NOAA data centers. The proposed VTOL UAS platform will improve the quantity and frequency of data to support improved weather forecasts and climate models in both civilian and Government applications. The end benefits will be improved meteorological information, wider range, reduced deployment and operational costs, and improved weather modeling and prediction.