Funding Pulled For UK’s Meteorological Airborne Laboratory

The UK’s Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurement (FAAM) is to cease operations at the end of this financial year, following a decision by public funding body UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). In a statement on February 26, the UKRI concluded that the airborne research asset “no longer offers value for money to the public because of a significant increase in costs and low planned utilization.”

The decision to terminate the FAAM comes as its BAe 146 test aircraft is due to emerge from a £49 million ($65 million) mid-life upgrade program, initiated in 2021 and set for completion in 2027. This would have seen the platform remaining operational through 2040.

AIN has approached the UKRI to quantify how the withdrawal of FAAM funding will fulfil its promise to “save nearly £32 million over the spending review period, and avoid a further £5 million in costs.” The organization had not responded as of press time. 

The FAAM aircraft has been instrumental in supporting numerous research objectives - including meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, cloud physics and radiation remote sensing - since being established in 2001. It is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), via the UKRI, and operated by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).

Of its some 300+ flying hours available a year, the UKRI says the majority of these are used to deliver UKRI-funded research. In an open letter, Maria Russo, research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, clarified that “data collected from this aircraft has been vital in developing and improving the next generation of weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry models, including the strategically important UK Earth System Model.”

The UKRI stated that alongside its own missions, “to date, the only other significant FAAM user has been the partnership with the Met Office, which ended in 2024”. This project focused on validating the accuracy of weather forecasts.  

Future Research Concerns

The UKRI promises that savings made will be retained within the UK environmental science community, with NERC investing in emerging models including “autonomous technology, land-based capabilities and remote sensing equipment.”

However, Russo believes that while NERC supports the adoption of complementary technologies, “no such infrastructure is currently available … and technical limitations mean they could not fill the gap left by the FAAM aircraft. Furthermore, in order for these new technologies to be properly developed and evaluated they will require independent verification from a trusted, existing platform, such as the FAAM aircraft.”

Potential European-based fixed-wing alternatives to the FAAM BAe 146 platform include the German Aerospace Center (DLR)’s HALO and France’s SAFIRE platforms. However, with these institution’s own research requirements already mapped out for the coming years, “once [FAAM] is decommissioned in just over a month, the UK community will lose a unique set of technical skills and a key science strategy,” concluded Russo.