Development and Deployment of Air-Launched Drifters from Small UAS

Swenson, Sara; Argrow, Brian; Frew, Eric W.; Borenstein, Steven; Keeler, Jason M.

doi:10.3390/s19092149

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…It is difficult to find the similar in-field experiments in the current application context. But, we can find some similar instrumentation setups, such as Swenson et al [6], some other (...), etc. The advantage of such in-field measurement system is threefold: (i) Direct quantification of Lagrangian turbulent dispersion and diffusion from real, in-field measurement; (ii) Tracking small variations of physical quantities inside real clouds; (iii) General under-standing of the cloud dynamics with simultaneous measurements in different parts of the cloud.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Those quantities together with sensor operating ranges, sample rate and provider functional unit are described in Table 1. Sensors are chosen based on their compact size and [6], (...), however such sensors consume more power, which is crucial for our application context. Moreover, GNSS sensor provides compact PVT (Position, Velocity and Time) navigation information by using proprietary protocol [10], which can not provided in a single sensor reading by using traditional NMEA protocol [11].…”

Section: Radioprobementioning

confidence: 99%

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Validation and traceability of multi-parameter miniaturized radiosondes for environmental observations

Abdunabiev¹,

Merlone²,

Musacchio³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The aim of the work is to design and develop light (less then 20 gr), expendable radioprobes to study complex micro-physical and chemical processes inside warm clouds. This includes the tracking of turbulent, both saturated and unsaturated, air parcels. With this new kind of radiosonde, we thus aim to obtain Lagrangian statistics of the intense turbulence inside warm clouds and of the lower intensity turbulence typical of the air surrounding them. The radiosonde is made of the radioprobe (the electronic board) attached to a biodegradable balloon filled with a mixture of helium and air. The system is able to float inside/into clouds for a time span of the order of a few hours and measure fluctuations of air temperature, pressure, humidity position, velocity and acceleration along with its own trajectory which Preliminary in-field experiments were carried out with a single and multiple radiosondes in different environments. Sensor readings are validated by comparison with reference values provided by INRIM traceable instrumentation and/or ARPA (Piemonte) and OAvdA nearby meteorological stations. The last two experiments, INRIM, September 29, 2021 and OAVdA, February 10, 2022, addressed the possibility to implement a distance neighbor graph algorithm (Richardson LF -1926) conceived for turbulent dispersion analysis in the atmosphere and which, actually, has not been yet realized in the context of in-field atmospheric observations.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Radioprobementioning

confidence: 99%

Validation and traceability of multi-parameter miniaturized radiosondes for environmental observations

Abdunabiev¹,

Merlone²,

Musacchio³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…For a limited number of Talon flights, the aircraft carried a "microsonde" custom temperature, pressure, and humidity sensor suite developed at CU. The microsonde was developed to be integrated into a Lagrangian drifter called the Driftersonde (Swenson et al, 2019) that could be launched from small RPASs for atmospheric research. The microsonde includes a MS8607 pressure, temperature, and humidity (PTH) sensor from TE Connectivity, which consists of a piezoresistive pressure sensing element, which measures both barometric pressure and temperature.…”

Section: Overview Of Platforms and Sensorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

University of Colorado and Black Swift Technologies RPAS-based measurements of the lower atmosphere during LAPSE-RATE

Boer

Dixon

Borenstein

et al. 2021

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Between 14 and 20 July 2018, small remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPASs) were deployed to the San Luis Valley of Colorado (USA) together with a variety of surface-based remote and in situ sensors as well as radiosonde systems as part of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). The observations from LAPSE-RATE were aimed at improving our understanding of boundary layer structure, cloud and aerosol properties, and surface–atmosphere exchange and provide detailed information to support model evaluation and improvement work. The current paper describes the observations obtained using four different types of RPASs deployed by the University of Colorado Boulder and Black Swift Technologies. These included the DataHawk2, the Talon and the TTwistor (University of Colorado), and the S1 (Black Swift Technologies). Together, these aircraft collected over 30 h of data throughout the northern half of the San Luis Valley, sampling altitudes between the surface and 914 m a.g.l. Data from these platforms are publicly available through the Zenodo archive and are co-located with other LAPSE-RATE data as part of the Zenodo LAPSE-RATE community (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 27 May 2021). The primary DOIs for these datasets are https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3891620 (DataHawk2, de Boer et al., 2020a, e), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4096451 (Talon, de Boer et al., 2020d), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4110626 (TTwistor, de Boer et al., 2020b), and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3861831 (S1, Elston and Stachura, 2020).

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“…However, they are different from other instrumented devices developed for atmospheric sounding, like the NCAR-NOAA Global Hawk tethered dropsonde (weight 167 g, length 30.5 cm, diameter 4.6 cm; square-cone parachute 20 cm on a side) used for vertical atmospheric profiling measurements (no Lagrangian trajectories) and launched by an unmanned aircraft from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) [ 24 ], or the NOAA ground-launched smart balloon (diameter of 335 cm) housing the sensors inside the enclosure and used for Lagrangian experimental hurricane research [ 25 ]. Additional devices are the short-range ground-launched weather balloon from NOAA carrying a tethered radiosonde (balloon diameter about 152 cm) [ 26 ], and the air-released balloon-tethered microsonde (total weight 65.6 g) for supercell thunderstorm studies [ 27 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovative Mini Ultralight Radioprobes to Track Lagrangian Turbulence Fluctuations within Warm Clouds: Electronic Design

Quintanilla

Abdunabiev

Allegretti

et al. 2021

Sensors

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Characterization of dynamics inside clouds remains a challenging task for weather forecasting and climate modeling as cloud properties depend on interdependent natural processes at micro- and macro-scales. Turbulence plays an important role in particle dynamics inside clouds; however, turbulence mechanisms are not yet fully understood partly due to the difficulty of measuring clouds at the smallest scales. To address these knowledge gaps, an experimental method for measuring the influence of small-scale turbulence in cloud formation in situ and producing an in-field cloud Lagrangian dataset is being developed by means of innovative ultralight radioprobes. This paper presents the electronic system design along with the obtained results from laboratory and field experiments regarding these compact (diameter ≈30 cm), lightweight (≈20 g), and expendable devices designed to passively float and track small-scale turbulence fluctuations inside warm clouds. The fully customized mini-radioprobe board (5 cm × 5 cm) embeds sensors to measure local fluctuations and transmit data to the ground in near real time. The tests confirm that the newly developed probes perform well, providing accurate information about atmospheric turbulence as referenced in space. The integration of multiple radioprobes allows for a systematic and accurate monitoring of atmospheric turbulence and its impact on cloud formation.

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Development and Deployment of Air-Launched Drifters from Small UAS

Cited by 9 publications

References 11 publications

Validation and traceability of multi-parameter miniaturized radiosondes for environmental observations

Validation and traceability of multi-parameter miniaturized radiosondes for environmental observations

University of Colorado and Black Swift Technologies RPAS-based measurements of the lower atmosphere during LAPSE-RATE

Innovative Mini Ultralight Radioprobes to Track Lagrangian Turbulence Fluctuations within Warm Clouds: Electronic Design

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