Stratospheric HAPS for enhancing societal resilience to extreme weather

There is a clear need to improve weather forecasting accuracy. The greatest contributions to forecast uncertainty is a lack of meteorological observations over remote areas and areas experiencing pronounced convective activity. StratoSolutions’ new high-altitude balloon (HAB) platform with mini-dropsonde is a disruptive new uncrewed meteorological observation data source able to collect data at regular intervals over the course of several days from remote regions in a cost-effective manner. This will result in reliable and accurate observations with high vertical resolution from remote areas of the globe benefit multiple industries and provide improved early forecasting. In this effort, HAB launch campaigns will be performed targeting tropical storms in the Atlantic and atmospheric rivers in the Pacific. Weather data will be collected and assimilated into weather models to determine forecast improvement against existing forecasts and actual weather conditions.