SkyGrid and MIT Lincoln Laboratory Partner to Advance Weather Forecasting for Safer AAM Operations

Sky­Grid and Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy Lin­coln Lab­o­ra­to­ry (MIT Lin­coln Lab­o­ra­to­ry) will work togeth­er to devel­op high-res­o­lu­tion weath­er fore­cast­ing capa­bil­i­ties, enabling safer and more scal­able Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions.

The part­ner­ship brings togeth­er SkyGrid’s exper­tise in air­space inte­gra­tion and sim­u­la­tion with MIT Lin­coln Laboratory’s decades of lead­er­ship in weath­er sens­ing, fore­cast­ing, and air traf­fic con­trol tech­nolo­gies.

Unlike con­ven­tion­al avi­a­tion, AAM oper­a­tions such as autonomous car­go flights and elec­tric air taxi pas­sen­ger ser­vices will take place at low­er alti­tudes where weath­er con­di­tions in the plan­e­tary bound­ary lay­er can be high­ly dynam­ic and unpre­dictable. This part­ner­ship will eval­u­ate how high-res­o­lu­tion fore­cast (HRF) mod­els can enhance safe­ty mar­gins, plan­ning, and exe­cu­tion effi­cien­cy.

Jor­dan Cohen, R&D Tech­ni­cal Lead at Sky­Grid, said: “Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty will best suc­ceed if we can solve the weath­er chal­lenge at scale. By inte­grat­ing MIT Lin­coln Laboratory’s high-res­o­lu­tion fore­cast mod­els into our sim­u­la­tion envi­ron­ments, we can begin to under­stand the pre­cise weath­er require­ments for safe, rou­tine, and high­ly auto­mat­ed oper­a­tions.

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion is a crit­i­cal step toward build­ing the deci­sion sup­port sys­tems that AAM oper­a­tors and ser­vice providers will need to thrive.”

Through this CRADA, Sky­Grid and MIT Lin­coln Lab­o­ra­to­ry aim to:

• Define the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of AAM oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy to weath­er fore­cast accu­ra­cy and res­o­lu­tion.
• Iden­ti­fy weath­er-spe­cif­ic and sys­tem-lev­el require­ments for future AAM oper­a­tions.
• Bench­mark MIT Lin­coln Laboratory’s HRF mod­el per­for­mance against NOAA’s High-Res­o­lu­tion Rapid Refresh (HRRR) mod­el and obser­va­tion­al data.
• Pro­vide scal­able, data-dri­ven insights into how high-res­o­lu­tion weath­er fore­cast­ing can unlock a high­er oper­a­tional tem­po in AAM.

Dr. Gabriele Enea, Assis­tant Group Leader, Air Traf­fic Con­trol & Weath­er Sys­tems Group at MIT Lin­coln Lab­o­ra­to­ry, said: “Lin­coln Lab­o­ra­to­ry has a long his­to­ry of advanc­ing weath­er and air traf­fic man­age­ment tech­nolo­gies that tran­si­tion into oper­a­tional use.

“By col­lab­o­rat­ing with Sky­Grid, we can expand this exper­tise into the emerg­ing AAM domain, ensur­ing weath­er data is not just avail­able, but action­able in the con­text of high­ly auto­mat­ed flight.”