A US company, Meteomatics, has introduced a drone base station called Meteobase, designed to offer an alternative to traditional weather balloons for gathering atmospheric data. The system features a ground-based station that can automatically launch and recover a drone.
The drone conducts pre-programmed flights, collecting data at different altitudes within the boundary layer – the atmosphere from ground level to a few thousand metres. After its mission, the drone returns to the Meteobase to recharge and download the collected data, which is then transmitted to researchers.
This setup could potentially replace the use of instrumented weather balloons, which are released daily but are subject to wind conditions and rely on helium. The Meteobase is designed to be weather-resistant and can facilitate multiple flights daily to monitor rapidly changing conditions such as fog, icing, or advancing weather fronts.