WxUAS is quickly becoming a vital tool for wildfire mitigation.
The Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research and Operations (CIWRO) at the University of Oklahoma has received $1.4 million to conduct research into mitigating the impacts of wildfires across the country. The grant, awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is part of a $34 million national initiative to improve the understanding and modeling of wildfire behavior and integrate that into weather forecasting and wildfire warnings.
An incident meteorologist works the frontlines of a wildfire in Idaho. Photo provided by NOAA.
The funding will be provided over five years to six research universities in NOAA’s Cooperative Institute system to support wildfire preparedness and response as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
CIWRO will conduct two major studies as part of the grant: Probabilistic Fire Weather Guidance and Fire Weather Observation Analysis.
To learn more about the award and how WxUAS, including the CopterSonde, will be used to further wildfire research, read the full article originally posted by Annette Price here.
