A Nationwide Weather Radar Network to Support Low Altitude Aircraft Operations

The National Airspace System is well served for high altitude aircraft operations, with long range weather radar and other observation capabilities at major commercial airports and along traditional long-range high-altitude routes. However, unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations are characterized by short-range, low-altitude flights that 'fly under the radar’, often in rural locations and utilizing innovative aircraft landing facilities such as vertiports and vertistops. These routes and locations are not currently instrumented adequately with weather sensors to guarantee safety of operations.

An ecosystem of new weather observing sensors and modalities would significantly support the industry. A nationwide network of gap-filling weather radars would supplement observations from the government radars, particularly at low altitudes, to include intensity of thunderstorms, damaging wind events, hurricanes, rain rates and low-level icing hazards. In addition to radars, we must also leverage available information from other sensors such as wind lidars, cameras, and satellites. The data from these disparate systems need to be quality controlled and assimilated into modeling systems to produce a new generation of high resolution, low-altitude forecasting products for the industry.

Climavision is a weather and climate technology company that is building out a supplemental national weather radar network and high-resolution forecasting systems to improve our understanding of changing weather patterns, with a focus on improving our visibility into weather hazards at low altitudes that impact existing general aviation, helicopter, and air ambulance services and future short range regional package delivery and passenger transport services. The company is also participating in testbeds across the nation and in standards development work. Progress and early results will be presented.