Our IRISS flight crew deployed multiple times to sites in eastern Colorado between April 15 and June 18听for several sets of IRISS flights supporting the World Meteorological Organization UAS Demonstration Campaign (WMO-DC).听WMO is coordinating the global campaign in 2024 to assess the capabilities of UAS to improve weather predictions.
The WMO Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Demonstration Campaign听aims to demonstrate the potential for UAS to play a role as an operational component of the upper-air observing system within the WMO Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS) under the Global Basic Observing Network (GBON). The IRISS field campaigns, led by Associate Director for Science Gijs de Boer, deployed to sites in the Pawnee National Grasslands and sites听near Ft. Morgan, CO. The mission is to听fly up to five 鈥渃limb-descend鈥� profiles each day, ranging from 30 m to 760 m (100 ft to 2,500 ft) above ground level. In-situ temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind are recorded as the RAAVEN is commanded to climb to 760 m at 2 m/s (7 ft/s), then descend at the same rate to 30 m, taking about 90 min to complete five climb-descend profiles. After each landing, the meteorological data are processed onsite and uploaded to the WMO website to be catalogued with data from multitudes of small UAS reporting from around the globe. Because of its demonstrated ability to operate in high winds and precipitation, the RAAVEN brings a unique capability for data collection to the global campaign. However, even the RAAVEN met its match and was not flown on 4/16 because of excessively high winds the entire day.
In the image, IRISS Engineering Manager and remote pilot-in-command Michael Rhodes completes the preflight checklist for the RAAVEN prior to takeoff of the first flight of the WMO-DC campaign, while remote pilot Ceu Gomez-Faulk sits at the ground station console in Tracker 1. After completing the checklist, Rhodes and visual observer Brian Argrow (photographer) will launch the RAAVEN from the RAPcat catapult raised on the roof of Tracker 1. [The saltlick (blue container) for cows grazing in the area proved convenient for the checklist operation.]