Abstract
Abstract. In July 2018, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) were deployed to measure the properties of the lower atmosphere within the San Luis Valley, an elevated valley in Colorado, USA, as part of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). Measurement objectives included detailing boundary layer transition, canyon cold-air drainage and convection initiation within the valley. Details of the contribution to LAPSE-RATE made by the University of Kentucky are provided here, which include measurements by seven different fixed-wing and rotorcraft UASs totaling over 178 flights with validated data. The data from these coordinated UAS flights consist of thermodynamic and kinematic variables (air temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction) and include vertical profiles up to 900 m above the ground level and horizontal transects up to 1500 m in length. These measurements have been quality controlled and are openly available in the Zenodo LAPSE-RATE community data repository (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 23 July 2020), with the University of Kentucky data available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3701845 (Bailey et al., 2020).
Highlights
This paper discusses the systems and contribution of the University of Kentucky researchers to the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) campaign conducted from 13 through 19 July 2018 in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, USA. In this campaign unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based atmospheric science research teams cooperated with researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to conduct UAS sensor intercomparison, along with separate days of UAS and ground observations focused on boundary layer transition, canyon cold-air drainage and convection initiation
This paper describes the contribution from University of Kentucky researchers towards the campaign objectives, including a description of the systems used and discussion of the data acquired during the LAPSE-RATE campaign
The CLOUDMAP program focused on the development of UAS technologies for meteorology and atmospheric science and resulted in advancement of capabilities for atmospheric observations with UASs, as demonstrated via multiuniversity flight campaigns (Smith et al, 2017), via validation experiments (Barbieri et al, 2019) and through observations of the surface layer transitions during the 2017 total eclipse (Bailey et al, 2019)
Summary
This paper discusses the systems and contribution of the University of Kentucky researchers to the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) campaign (de Boer et al, 2020b) conducted from 13 through 19 July 2018 in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, USA. In this campaign unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based atmospheric science research teams cooperated with researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (de Boer et al, 2020a) to conduct UAS sensor intercomparison, along with separate days of UAS and ground observations focused on boundary layer transition, canyon cold-air drainage and convection initiation. Examples of some of the features observed within the data are highlighted as well
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