Collecting Weather Data at 35,000 Feet:
A Community Weather Station and Balloon Network
This article spotlights Helium Foundation grantee Kanda Weather Group and their climate resilience efforts across African universities.
About the Helium Grantee
Nicolas Lopez is the founder of Kanda Weather Group, working to build an entirely community-owned weather balloon network. They are dedicated to empowering African university students to become local climate change leaders. Lopez comes from a background working at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on GOES-16 weather satellites. In 2019, Lopez left NASA inspired by the potential of blockchain and IoT technology. Soon after, they recognized the low-power, long-range potential of LoRaWAN to solve one of the most intractable field efforts in the climate science community: collecting high-altitude weather data for climate resilience efforts. In 2020, Lopez founded the Kanda Weather Group to collect weather data in developing countries using a community-sourced approach. Through their work, Lopez and their team are enabling communities to build robust data sets and create climate resilience.
The Kanda Weather Mission
Upper-air data from the regions of many developing countries play an outsized role in weather and climate forecasting. Upper-air data helps numerical models make better predictions about extreme flood and drought events. Data of this nature and from these regions could help rainfall forecasts for local populations and can even be used to improve the forecasting of Atlantic hurricanes in 7 to 14-day timeframes. Yet, bureaucracy and ineffectual government funding in the region has led to the rapid degradation of weather balloon stations in critical areas for the past 20 years. In 2008, scientists concluded that the best way to reverse the trend of inadequate funding and lack of government intervention would be to establish a network of independent government agencies with direct payments to individuals for preparing and launching weather balloons. Kanda Weather Group took this call to action, which is why we exist today.
Operating In The Air
Helium’s LoRaWAN network is a low-power, long-range radio communications technology that performs incredibly well in line-of-sight situations where obstacles and obstructions are low. It is highly suited for outdoor sensors and indoor monitors that only require sending small amounts of data.
A rising weather balloon maximizes this line-of-sight property as there are fewer and fewer ground obstacles that may reduce the signal strength. Effectively, the balloon becomes more and more like a small satellite with an enormous footprint to communicate with tens if not hundreds of Helium Hotspots on the ground. The Helium Network’s redundancy helps compensate for the balloons’ natural drift away from the launch location. This redundancy adds extra reliability when the balloon’s radio signals must pass through clouds or rainy weather.
The top of the troposphere typically extends to around 33,000 feet, which happens to be around the 10-kilometer range of LoRaWAN, as well as the height at which a 30-gram weather balloon will burst due to the low atmospheric pressure. The content means we can meet our data goals while extending to the balloon’s limitations. We’ve often found very little background noise when receiving data from balloons in the 868MHz frequency range.
With the Helium LoRaWAN network, we can achieve our mission and fill a vital role in helping communities produce weather balloon stations. With blockchain and Helium’s LoRaWAN network, we can make the data accessible to anyone anywhere on earth while compensating local communities directly for the manual process of launching a balloon.
Additionally, many advanced technologies have been vital in allowing us even to create this business model. With the small size, low power, and low cost of microprocessors, we are bridging international communities and collecting upper-air data without needing expensive equipment — keeping overhead costs low. Smartphones allow us to discuss the project and troubleshoot technical problems in real-time.
Launch Process Overview
We’ve been working with university students across Africa to implement our weather balloon prototypes. Students set up Dragino LPS8 Helium data-only Hotspots and similar LoRaWAN gateways. We’ve been immensely impressed with students’ technical skills to connect the gateways using SIM and local university LAN backhaul.
We use an off-the-shelf hardware product called the TTGO LoRa32, where custom firmware is loaded onto the balloon payload to send temperature, pressure, and humidity data at 5–10 second intervals. The code was written using a combination of open-source Arduino library sketches. The students 3D-print the enclosures, see Figure 2 (and are given the STL file beforehand).
Before every launch, students follow directions on the OLED screen to connect to a WiFi AP broadcasted from the ESP32. Here they input the account name of a digital currency called Telos to receive Weather Miner rewards for doing the balloon launch. Each weather balloon launcher receives $0.25, with the smart contract continually sending small micro-payments as the balloon ascends. A server-based architecture means that most technical issues can be solved remotely.
Need for ISM Band Regulation
The Kanda Weather Group is already seeing success in balloon deployment, student education, and making a notable impact on climate resiliency in critical areas across Africa.
Unfortunately, we have come up against regulatory issues preventing the technology from mass adoption, innovation, and scale. Today, the legal LoRaWAN frequency varies from country to country. We have chosen to use the range of EU868 because it’s what’s recommended by the LoRa Alliance specification 1.0.4. But, even rapidly growing IT-focused countries are having trouble defining the exact legal spectrum on which to operate.
ECOWAS is the Competitive Authority of the Economic Community of West African States and is responsible for sorting out spectrum issues generally and IoT specifically. But, critical regulatory work in many West African countries lags, and, thus, most don’t have frequency plans, hindering technical IoT development and our work specifically.
A fundamental first step is needed to sort the regulatory issues. With a clear mandate to use either EU868 or AS923 spectrums, Helium or other LoRaWAN providers and device makers can determine what hardware to build. For Kanda, further deploying into the wrong band means potentially violating laws and regulations.
More information about ECOWAS can be found here.
Initial Successes
Kanda Weather Group completed 25 launches total with students from 5 locations in the U.S. and Africa to field test the blockchain and IoT technology. The founder, Nicolas Lopez, personally helped establish hydrogen generation stations at several universities in developing countries by providing the needed equipment and setup guides.
Eventually, with a large enough weather balloon dataset, there are potentially millions of dollars in long-term insurance savings through improving hurricane genesis forecasts over the east Atlantic. Only 20 well-maintained stations would be needed to replace the current weather balloon network in the region operated by NOAA and NAMMA field programs. Kanda is excited to help build this critical infrastructure.
Next Steps for Kanda Weather
Building on our success, we continue looking for any potential funding and thank the Helium Foundation for helping us move from our seed stage into new opportunities.
This year we will do a 9-month university pilot to collect a machine learning training dataset for a rainfall forecasting model.
Additionally, we’ll collect ground weather information worldwide in a project called AscensionWx. This project reaches beyond university students in Africa and is likely available to deploy in your area. If you’re interested in participating in this project, check out our Discord.
Want to support the Kanda Weather Group? Contact us today.
