SkyGrid and MIT Lincoln Laboratory partner to advance high-resolution weather forecasting for AAM

Summary Points:

• The project focuses on improving forecast accuracy for low-altitude operations such as cargo drones and passenger eVTOL aircraft.
• Researchers will benchmark MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s high-resolution weather model against NOAA’s HRRR model.
• The collaboration aims to support safer and more efficient AAM operations through actionable, data-driven weather insights.

AUSTIN, Texas - SkyGrid, an Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) third-party service provider in Austin, Texas, has entered into a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass., to jointly develop high-resolution weather forecasting capabilities aimed at enabling safer and more scalable AAM operations.

The CRADA, executed under the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986 and extended to Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, combines SkyGrid’s background in airspace integration and simulation with MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s research in weather sensing, forecasting, and air traffic control systems.

Unlike conventional aviation, AAM operations such as autonomous cargo flights and passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) services occur at lower altitudes, where weather conditions within the planetary boundary layer are highly dynamic and difficult to predict. The collaboration will evaluate how high-resolution forecast models can improve safety margins, flight planning, and operational efficiency.

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"Advanced Air Mobility will best succeed if we can solve the weather challenge at scale," said Jordan Cohen, R&D technical lead at SkyGrid. "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."

SkyGrid is defining performance requirements for essential AAM components such as weather modeling, which provide critical input for planning and simulation functions.

"Lincoln Laboratory has a long history of advancing weather and air traffic management technologies that transition into operational use," said Dr. Gabriele Enea, assistant group leader of the Air Traffic Control and Weather Systems Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "By collaborating with SkyGrid, we can extend this expertise into the emerging AAM domain, ensuring weather data is not just available, but actionable for highly automated flight."

Under the agreement, SkyGrid and MIT Lincoln Laboratory will analyze how forecast accuracy and resolution affect AAM operational efficiency, identify weather-specific and system-level requirements for future AAM operations, benchmark MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s high-resolution forecast model performance against NOAA’s High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model and real-world data, and develop insights into how improved weather forecasting can enable more efficient AAM flight operations.