Description:

Even with weather sensors at almost airport, weather sensors owned by transportation departments and even homeowners, and an array of satellites, radar, and aircraft observations taking weather measurements, there are still significant gaps in our global observation network. These gaps limit understanding of the current conditions of the environment, especially in identifying and predicting areas of potential thunderstorm development, icing, low visibility, cloud layers, and turbulence that impact aviation operations. The most significant measurement gap is in the Planetary Boundary Layer, where most helicopters, Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) and Urban Air Mobility vehicles are flying or are planning to fly. To help fill this gap, novel new sensors and emerging capabilities are being developed, including deriving of weather data from non-traditional, non-weather sensors. This session is on those emerging sensors and technologies, and how they are being used to generate weather information that can be passed along directly to users and/or assimilated into weather prediction models. Exploiting camera imagery, UAS as a sensor, deriving weather information from communication data transmitted directly from the aircraft, new weather radar systems, and cheaper ASOS-like observing stations are just a few examples of potential capabilities that could be explored.