Preliminary results of World Meteorological Organization Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Demonstration Campaign (WMO UAS DC)

The WMO Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Demonstration Campaign (UAS-DC) was organised to measure the ability of a range of UAS to meet the requirements for operational upper air observations and to assess their ability to fill observational gaps in WIGOS GBON and/or RBON. Data were collected over a 7-month period from March to September 2024 and 3 Special Observing Periods were performed: during US March 2024 Eclipse, Paris Olympics and during 2024 ISARRA Flight Week Campaign in September, using WMO NetCDF data format standard, which were automatically converted to the BUFR format. These two standardised formats facilitated the widespread use of UAS weather observations by researchers and NWP modelling centres around the world. In addition to deploying a distributed trial network of UAS to test the concept, the campaign used the WMO Information System (Version 2.0, WIS 2.0) to provide real-time data to participating subscribers during the campaign. These highly flexible, accurate and environmentally friendly weather sensing UAS provide a new innovative observing system for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) to fill observational gaps and subsequently improve numerical weather prediction capabilities. The UAS-DC provided insight into the potential use of crowd-sourced data from observations of opportunity collected by the delivering UAS. We present in this work an overview of the campaign, including a discussion of the methods, and the potential impact that UAS observations collected at regional scales may have, as indicated by initial studies conducted by NWP centres.