Operational Capability of Drone‐Based Meteorological Profiling in an Urban Area

During the Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Demonstration Campaign (UAS‐DC), led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), twice‐daily meteorological profiling was conducted for 2 months at the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba City (Japan), which is identified as a densely inhabited district. This campaign was instigated to assess the feasibility of obtaining continuous daily measurements for the long term (over a period of more than 1 month), to distribute the data in a format designated for numerical weather prediction, and to evaluate data quality compared to conventional meteorological data. Three types of uncrewed aircraft systems were utilized, that is, a meteorological medium‐sized hexacopter and medium‐ and small‐sized commercial drones with meteorological sensors attached. The maximum flight height was limited to 900 m above ground level owing to airspace regulations around the observation site. Compared with routine radiosonde data, the bias of air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed measurements was less than 0.3 K, 1.5%, and 0.6 m s−1 ${\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, respectively, thereby meeting WMO requirements. Moreover, data transfer to the WMO‐prepared repository was completed within 30 min after measurement acquisition. Based on user experience, several aspects regarding the UAS‐DC campaign were discussed from the perspective of sustainable operation and atmospheric boundary layer research. Plain Language Summary Computer‐generated weather prediction requires vast quantities of meteorological data to create a picture of the current state of the atmosphere on which forecasts are based. Balloons carrying meteorological sensors are released daily worldwide to complement ground‐based and satellite‐derived observations to acquire measurements between Earth's surface and the stratosphere. As part of a campaign organized by the World Meteorological Organization, this study investigated the applicability of using drones as a sustainable and low‐cost alternative approach to collecting vertical profiles of meteorological information. The suitability of three types of drones was assessed for use in an urban area in Japan, and the accuracy of the data they recorded was compared with that of observations obtained using the traditional balloon‐based method. Despite the airspace regulations in force at the launch site, which limited flights to a maximum height of 900 m above ground level, the accuracy of the observations obtained by the sensor