Drones Offer Alternative to Balloons For Weather Research (theguardian.com) 20
The U.S. company Meteomatics has created an automated weather-monitoring system that uses drones to collect atmospheric data at multiple altitudes before returning to recharge and upload their findings. The so-called Meteobase, which consists of a base station on the ground with a drone that can be launched and recovered automatically, "is highly weather resistant and keeps the drone at a comfortable temperature," reports The Guardian. "It can send out one data-gathering mission a day, or multiple flights to monitor fog, icing, an advancing weather front, or other fast-changing conditions." The report says the reusable drones could offer a cheaper, more controllable alternative to helium weather balloons, especially for tracking rapidly changing conditions.
Augment, not replace (Score:3)
I doubt that drones can reach the altitudes that helium balloons can. OTOH, balloons are a one time shot; drones come back home for a charge and reuse. TCO and ROI must be a lot better.
On a side note, I live near the beach. Everyday I see small planes dragging a banner. I've been waiting for years to see a banner with just a drone at each corner, flying by itself with no plane.
Re:Augment, not replace (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. Propeller based systems have a record of 12km. Most drones and other propeller based vertical lift craft have a limit closer to around 6km. Weather balloons can go as high as 30km.
Re: (Score:3)
This drone flew at altitude of 20km back in the late 80s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That NASA sun-powered drone, Helios, beat the one above by a km or two and flew for weeks, IIRC.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-conten... [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Neither of those are vertical lift craft. If you want to invoke NASA the closest you can come to is the Ingenuity helicopter which could *in theory* make those heights (it wasn't tested in Earth's atmosphere), but then no one is replacing a couple of hundred dollar weather balloon with a $85million drone either, especially right now while the administration considers the weather to be some kind of woke DEI nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Neither of those are vertical lift craft
What of it? Your original and grossly incorrect statement was that no propeller craft can reach high altitudes, you're still wrong.
Re: Augment, not replace (Score:1)
Re: Augment, not replace (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
No they can't. There's a practical limit to everything, even NASA's fancy helicopter. In any case it's irrelevant. The fact is no drone has flown as high as a weather balloon on earth. And I don't think DJI is releasing $85 million drones for the weather measurement industry to flock to to replace their $500 (total cost including helium and average lost payload) weather baloons.
So that really is very much irrelevant. Nothing on the market flies as high as a balloon.
Re:Augment, not replace (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA leads off with: "Weather happens in the boundary layer, the atmosphere from ground level to a few thousand metres, but this can be difficult to study in detail: weather stations are too low, and aircraft are expensive."
So, a very targeted augment. To what extent are they firing off balloons simply to grab that boundary layer data rather than the 30km stuff they're great at? I don't know. I suspect that even if not a single balloon is replaced, getting a bunch of high resolution low altitude data upwind of population centers will make the local forecasts a lot better.
We're also now in the era where we're learning what less balloon data looks like, that was one of the cuts DOGE did to the NWS. So getting back SOME data in a more efficient way can only help.
Re: Augment, not replace (Score:2)
grift.
an established government project that was slashed.
a limited usage project feeding from government funding.
this project has an elliptical office scat stain smell.
They'd serve different purposes. (Score:3)
A balloon is not static, it moves with the atmospheric system it is in. Ergo, it tells you how that system evolves. A drone cannot do this.
A drone can stay put, relative to the ground, telling you how a location's atmosphere evolves. A balloon cannot do this.
These are solving completely different types of problem.
You could, of course, construct a hybrid, as balloons are traditionally single-shot. If a balloon carries the measurement gear and a drone capable of carrying that same gear PLUS a deflated balloon, then you can have something that operates as a balloon until it reaches some pre-set location, whereupon the balloon's gas is released and the drone flies the ensemble to a collection point.
Re:They'd serve different purposes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Models and meteorologists want a *vertical* sample of the atmosphere. The ideal sensor would not bend, deflect, or drift off with the winds aloft. Balloons do a *lot* of drifting.
The soundings returned by the balloons are all skewed to some degree or another.
Re: (Score:1)
But, as long as they know where it drifted to (like they do know now), they can still provide solid data (plus, that GPS movement shows WTH the jetstream is doing at such-and-such altitude).
I assume thr 'drones in TFA are the typical home-gamer quad-copters... unless we're talking a big 'un, or a hex or even octo, it's not gonna have remotely close to enough battery to even get up to so-and-so altitude, let alone hang around long enough to gather data for an extended time period (and, if you assign it a fli
Re: (Score:2)
I assume thr 'drones in TFA are the typical home-gamer quad-copters... unless we're talking a big 'un, or a hex or even octo, it's not gonna have remotely close to enough battery to even get up to so-and-so altitude, let alone hang around long enough to gather data for an extended time period
Wow! You know you wouldn't have to ASSUME anything if you would just RTFA!
Re: (Score:1)
(in my most condescending voice) "Wow!"
I forgot... the comment box isn't a place for discussion, it's just here to beat people over the head and call them idiots. So sorry to somehow make you respond when you didn't have to. (in my most condescending voice) I'm so sorry for making you call me an idiot and disturbing you.
Here's an idea... there's a thing called discussion... that's where we can talk and toss ideas and thoughts out and we can chat about those without resorting to name calling and slapping t
Re: (Score:2)
They can get vertical samples from space and the ground. What they can't get from space or the ground is how the internals of a system evolve.
The problem with "models" in the abstract is that there are a lot of them and some of the time the thing you want is to know the same point relative to the system and not to the mudball.
USA is jumping the shark wrt weather balloons (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems that the USA is dropping the ball [theglobeandmail.com] on weather balloon monitoring.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, 12km isn't big in terms of upper air weather - at those altitudes it's more for predicting how the fronts are moving, and those are huge things where 12km resolution is basically good enough.
Weather is based on many models - you have the hyper local models which can predict the weather down to basically a part of a city, then you have models capable of doing weather at a county and state level, then even larger models good for many states to half the country. Sure it's not like Back To The Future