Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology: NOAA's Application of the Global Hawk Aircraft for High Impact Weather Forecasting

Abstract:

The NOAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) program has begun the project Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) to evaluate the potential of high altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft like the Global Hawk to improve forecasts of high-impact weather events and mitigate any degradations in the forecasts that might occur if there were a gap in satellite coverage. The first phase of the project is occurring this August and September using the NASA Global Hawk to study the impact of targeted observations of hurricanes and tropical cyclones. This follows several successful research missions conducted by both NASA and NOAA. Instruments on the aircraft for SHOUT include the Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (AVAPS or dropsondes), the High Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR, a microwave sounder), the High-Altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler (HIWRAP, a scanning Doppler precipitation radar), and the Lightning Instrument Package (LIP). The observations are being utilized for real-time forecasting, ingestion into operational weather models, and in post mission impact studies. Data impact is being evaluated through a combination of Observing System Experiments (OSEs) and Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs). This presentation describes observations collected during this year’s campaign, utilization of the data at the National Hurricane Center, and the results of preliminary data impact assessments of the data from SHOUT and previous experiments.