A new, innovative approach to high resolution weather modeling at the USAF that incorporates local weather sensors with global offline capabilities

CustomWeather, Inc., a weather forecasting and technology company based in Mill Valley, California, is seeking a Phase 1 SBIR Grant to help the U.S. Air Force improve weather forecasts, particularly during times of combat and offline operations. CustomWeather will assist the USAF in developing a high resolution weather forecast model that can run on a simple laptop or smartphone in an offline environment during combat operations. á CustomWeather, Inc. intends to adapt its high resolution weather forecasting technology to the specific needs of the military including incorporation of tactical weather sensors and offline capabilities in remote corners of the globe. CustomWeatherĺs high resolution weather model runs globally at 100-meter resolution and incorporates an ensemble of government weather models based on recent performance at various time steps and locations. Artificial intelligence is used to weigh the accuracy of the input. á CustomWeather intends to incorporate the USAFĺs own model, the Global Air-Land Weather Exploitation Model (GALWEM), into its own model, the CW100 model, to provide greatly enhanced surface resolution and accuracy to the forecasts that the USAF already receives. Part of that enhancement can be through the transmission of local weather readings from tactical weather stations, or any other weather profile or sounding information that may be available.á CustomWeather can train its own model around mobile weather stations in the field and also utilize that information to enhance short term weather forecasts. á The CustomWeather model is a physics-based model that utilizes the highest resolution terrain data from NASA and can capture many microclimate features, particularly around wind and temperature that a global model such as GALWEM simply cannot capture. These include fine scale features such as ridgetop winds, winds funneling through canyons, sea breeze interaction, and even the effect of large buildings. All of these features may play a role in flight operations, particularly during take-off and landing. á During the Phase 1 research, CustomWeather will fine tune its weather model around data sources available to the USAF and enhance the offline capabilities of the model in remote regions of the world. CustomWeather will also showcase the ability of running its model on hardware and operating systems that are used in the field, whether it be a laptop or smart phone. á As part of its Phase 1 SBIR Grant, CustomWeather intends to demonstrate the actual model results for a sample combat domain with real-time sensor data. CustomWeather will showcase the results side-by-side with current GALWEM model data and other commonly available government weather models. The end result will provide the USAF with much improved weather forecasts on a daily basis and advanced ability to provide accurate weather forecasts during combat operations in remote corners of the world. á