Summary

Targeted observations from aircraft in oceanic regions could significantly improve how well weather models forecast significant events such as (1) tropical storms, (2) winter storms and (3) major floods. The long duration and large oceanic areas that can be observed using advanced UAS such as the Global Hawk make this UAS a potentially important observing platform, for environmental assessment and forecasting. The NOAA UAS Program has designed a project focused on sensing high impact weather-related hazards called “Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT)”. The project to sense high impact weather hazards will partner with NASA to conduct missions for operational prototype data collection, be utilized for both observing and predicting high impact oceanic weather, determine the utility of UAS data in prediction of dangerous storms that can affect the United States, quantify the influence of UAS environmental data to high impact weather prediction, determine best observing strategies, assess the operational effectiveness of UAS to mitigate the satellite data gap, begin with a targeted observing effort using NASA Global Hawk platforms and payloads, as the project matures, consider other viable unmanned observing technologies may be incorporated into the observing strategies as operational prototypes.