This award will provide funding for participation in a small field project making use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for atmospheric observations. UASs are attractive platforms for atmospheric scientists due to their ability to fly into regions where other observation systems can?t, such as under the base of a supercell thunderstorm. This award will allow researchers the opportunity to compare four different small UASs and their instrument payloads. This work has broader impact through the development and testing of new technologies which will help to improve the understanding of atmospheric processes and the capability to forecast weather and climate.
The project will take place at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO) in Colorado. The four UASs will be flown near the instrumented BAO tower and also in the range of the Colorado State University CHILL radar and the Texas Tech University Ka-band mobile radar. This will allow the researchers the opportunity to compare the UASs against proven, ground-based measurements. The second step will be to fly all four of the UASs on a target of interest, such as a cloud or a thunderstorm. The data will be used to refine the current systems and as a benchmark for the development of future systems.
