Using Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Severe Local Storms Research and Forecasting (Invited Presentation)

Technological and regulatory advances over the last decade have made it possible to use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to fill data gaps that have so far limited our ability to observe and therefore understand and predict severe local storms. UAS have been, and will continue to be, integrated into field campaigns aimed to advance basic understanding of severe local storms; the data they collect have been assimilated into convection-allowing numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and the impacts have been assessed; and their value filling the most acute information gaps within the stream of real-time data available to operational forecasters has been evaluated. In this talk, previous, active, and future applications of UAS in field campaigns designed to advance understanding of severe local storms will be presented. Results from analysis of UAS data collected on the 10 June 2010 Last Chance supercell during VORTEX2 will be presented as an example. Plans for spring-2017 field deployments will also be discussed. This talk will also address active and future field- and model-based investigations of the potential value of UAS for directly improving storm-scale predictions through assimilation in convection-allowing NWP models. Since UAS data are likely to have value when integrated into the real-time data stream available to operational forecasters, results will also be presented from an evaluation of data needs of National Weather Service forecasters for short-term forecasting and how these needs might be met by UAS. Ultimately, UAS have the potential to transform the surveillance meteorological observation network, but if and how their integration occurs must be informed through quantitative evaluation of their impacts when assimilated into NWP models and integrated into the real-time data stream.