Weather

Rising global temperatures are forcing authorities in France to limber up the habitual straight-jacket restrictions on operating drones in Paris, and allow designated craft to hover on high to hunt out spots in and around the capital where people can cool off.

Supernal, the advanced air mobility (AAM) unit of South Korean automotive giant Hyundai, has taken a minority shareholding stake in micro-climate specialist TruWeather Solutions, whose hyper-localized atmospheric tech solutions will be used in operating safe and comfortable air taxi services.

Swiss tech company Meteomatics is set to launch its drone-based Meteodrone low atmospheric weather analysis platform in North Dakota today – a first in the US that the firm says will provide UAV and other aircraft clients a far clearer picture of rapidly shifting local weather conditions than standard forecasts produce.

Leading drone delivery company Wing is pushing ahead with plans to considerably scale its aerial activity through intensified testing of its craft in the kinds of challenging weather conditions the entire sector will have to overcome if it’s to become a true challenger to legacy road transportation.

Boston-based startup GreenSight is reporting a significant business breakthrough with the selection of its WeatherHive drone swarm atmosphere sensing tech for prototype development by the US Air Force (USAF) and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

Switzerland’s Meteodrone is working to address one of the main elements that can disrupt or even prevent the world’s expanding range of UAV activities: the often sketchy, abruptly changing  weather conditions at the lower altitude levels in which drones operate.

Safety avionics specialist Iris Automation has made a meteorological enhancement to its Casia G ground-based surveillance system with the integration of TruWeather Solutions sensors and services – a move aiming to add climate security to the company’s aerial detect-and-avoid protection.

Huge clouds of dust engulfed the Phoenix Metropolitan Area this week – a consequence of monsoon season’s arrival without the rain that drought-plagued Arizona usually expects from the storms. A drone flown in one Phoenix suburb filmed video of the eerie gray mass as winds blew the dust clouds over the city.

An American storm chaser captured some astonishing video over the weekend. He managed to intercept a tornado with a drone, and the footage is something else.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) hopes drones can do something about one of its most precious and scarce natural resources. It’s hired British researchers to explore ways drones can make it rain.