Virtual Integration of Satellite and In-Situ Observation Networks (VISION)

The recent expansion in satellite Earth observations is providing an ever growing set of data that can help us understand the Earth System. This is mirrored by the increase in in-situ observational data from aircrafts, ships and other platforms. These data are ripe for exploitation by various modelling systems, such as in the creation of digital twins of the environment to improve our understanding and decision making processes.

The BAe-146 aircraft of the FAAM Airborne Laboratory is a key part of NERCs observational portfolio, which has recently received £49M of funding to extend its lifetime out to 2040. Following these upgrades, FAAM will undertake around 70 flights per year from 2026 onwards. However, these flights are costly, with each flying hour having a full economic cost of £20,000 (£4000-5000 for the flight time itself) and emitting 6.5 tonnes of CO2. Currently, FAAM accounts for 3.8% of NERCs CO2 emissions, and while other mitigation strategies are already taking place, these do not consider the flights themselves.

It is estimated that 20-40% of all FAAM flights may be suboptimal, where the data produced from the flights has a reduced scientific benefit. In this project we will develop a digital twin to improve campaign planning operations for the FAAM aircraft, both to improve the flight plans to better match the scientific aims, and also to reduce the number of flights necessary to achieve those aims. This will therefore both reduce FAAMs CO2 emissions and improve the quality of its scientific output.

We will develop this digital twin by developing a standalone open-source toolkit, built within an already-used Python package that complies with international data standards, improving its interoperability between models. The VISION toolkit will allow for a variety of observations, and in this project we will focus on satellite observations and flight data collected by FAAM. We will demonstrate this toolkit within two different modelling systems; the Forecasting Operations for Research Campaigns and Experiments (FORCE) modelling infrastructure, a forecast system designed for flight planning operations, and within the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) to highlight its use to the international climate modelling community to better inform governments and policymakers.

While we focus on these two applications of the VISION toolkit, it could be applied to a large number of international modelling systems and incorporate observations from a wide variety of platforms. At the completion of this project, alongside a detailed project report, we will also run a training event for the international community to learn how to implement this toolkit within their own model infrastructure.

Our team brings together atmospheric modellers, observational scientists, software engineers from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), and satellite experts from the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) and the UK Earth Observation Climate Information Service (UK EOCIS) to deliver a novel framework to reduce the carbon footprint of the UK research aircraft and to provide a toolkit that will allow for better integration of models and observations.