Better weather sensing could reduce ‘weather tax’ in the form of delays and cancellations.Climate and weather matters to UAS and advanced air mobility (AAM) operations. For small UAS flights, 14 CFR § 107.51, operating rules for small unmanned aircraft, contains both visibility and cloud clearance requirements. For UAS and urban air mobility (UAM) operations, NASA’s Urban Air Mobility Concept of Operations (ConOps) 1.0 and the FAA’s UAS Traffic Management ConOps 2.0 both list specialized weather as a key supplemental data service provider.
And yet, according to TruWeather Solutions CEO Don Berchoff, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and the former National Weather Service (NWS) Science and Technology director, “Existing weather models lack sufficient measurement data in the lower levels of the atmosphere. Weather produces an estimated 20% ‘weather tax’ in the form of weather cancellations and delays, which negatively impact revenue. The lack of accurate weather measurements contributes to this, but we can address this.”
A national network of air and ground-based weather sensors could close these weather data voids, improve real time weather awareness and reduce traditional modeling and computer processing commercialization hurdles. All of this will increase flight time—and income.
Topics: weather, sensors, climate, TruWeather Solutions, Anemoment, Grand Sky, drones, autonomous operations, beyond visual line of sight, weather tax, GEO satellites, Meteodrone
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