Observations of the thermodynamic and kinematic state of the atmospheric boundary layer over the San Luis Valley, CO, using the CopterSonde 2 remotely piloted aircraft system in support of the LAPSE-RATE field campaign

Abstract

Abstract. In July 2018, the University of Oklahoma deployed three CopterSonde remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPASs) to take measurements of the evolving thermodynamic and kinematic state of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) over complex terrain in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. A total of 180 flights were completed over 5 d, with teams operating simultaneously at two different sites in the northern half of the valley. A total of 2 d of operations focused on convection initiation studies, 1 d focused on ABL diurnal transition studies, 1 d focused on internal comparison flights, and the last day of operations focused on cold air drainage flows. The data from these coordinated flights provide insight into the horizontal heterogeneity of the atmospheric state over complex terrain. This dataset, along with others collected by other universities and institutions as a part of the LAPSE-RATE campaign, have been submitted to Zenodo (Greene et al., 2020) for free and open access (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3737087).

The mobility virtual environment (MoVE): an open source framework for gathering and visualizing atmospheric observations using multiple vehicle-based sensors

“…25 The evolving thermodynamic and kinematic state of the ABL over complex terrain has also been investigated by an assortment of UA operating at two different sites simultaneously. 26–28 The General Urban area Microclimate Predictions (GUMP) tool forecasts urban flow and has been validated using simultaneous observations from multiple meteorologically instrumented UA. 3,29…”

“…25 The evolving thermodynamic and kinematic state of the ABL over complex terrain has also been investigated by an assortment of UA operating at two different sites simultaneously. [26][27][28] The General Urban area Microclimate Predictions (GUMP) tool forecasts urban ow and has been validated using simultaneous observations from multiple meteorologically instrumented UA. 3,29 Other mobile platforms include ship-based measurements, 30 crewed (manned) aircra measurements, 31 or dropping radiosondes or launching radiosondes, 32 tethered balloon systems, 33 or pedestrian measurements.…”

Remote-sensing and radiosonde datasets collected in the San Luis Valley during the LAPSE-RATE campaign

“…Satellite imagery © Google Maps. et al, 2012; Rhodes and Lundquist, 2013;Bodini et al, 2019) measures line-of-sight wind velocity along the four cardinal directions with a nominal elevation angle of 62 • and a temporal resolution of about 1 Hz along each beam direction (Aitken et al, 2012;Rhodes and Lundquist, 2013;Bodini et al, 2018), assuming horizontal homogeneity in the measurement volume (Lundquist et al, 2015). The measurements are taken every 20 m from 40 to 220 m a.g.l.…”

“…This offset error has been corrected in the netCDF files. More information about the processing as well as validation can be found in Rhodes and Lundquist (2013) and Lundquist et al (2015). In addition to measurements of winds and derived quantities like turbulence intensity and turbulence kinetic energy, these lidar data allow estimation of the turbulence dissipation rate (Bodini et al, 2019).…”

Comment on amt-2024-34

“…While this application has already been explored (e.g. Bärfuss et al, 2023;Pillar-Little et al, 2021;Segales et al, 2020;Varentsov et al, 2023) the available instrumentation have slow response and limited vertical resolution (Segales et al, 2022). The instrument described in this paper would be ideal for obtaining observations over very small scales (e.g., centimeters), including obtaining frequent high-resolution thermodynamic profiles at locations where observational gaps limit numerical weather prediction and climate modelling (Kämpfer, 2013).…”