Vertical Profiles of Ozone Concentration Collected by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and the Mixing of the Nighttime Boundary Layer over an Amazonian Urban Area

Abstract

The nighttime boundary layer was studied in an urban area surrounded by tropical forest by use of a copter-type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in central Amazonia during the wet season. Fifty-seven vertical profiles of ozone concentration, potential temperature, and specific humidity were collected from surface to 500 m above ground level (a.g.l.) at high vertical and temporal resolutions by use of embedded sensors on the UAV. Abrupt changes in ozone concentration with altitude served as a proxy of nighttime boundary layer (NBL) height for the case of a normal, undisturbed, stratified nighttime atmosphere, corresponding to 40% of the cases. The median height of the boundary layer was 300 m. A turbulent mixing NBL constituted 28% of the profiles, while the median height of the boundary layer was 290 m. The remaining 32% of profiles corresponded to complex atmospheres without clear boundary layer heights. The occurrence of the three different cases correlated well with relative cloud cover. The results show that the standard nighttime model widely implemented in chemical transport models holds just 40% of the time, suggesting new challenges in modeling of regional nighttime chemistry. The boundary layer heights were also somewhat higher than observed previously over forested and pasture areas in Amazonia, indicating the important effect of the urban heat island.

Vertical Characteristics of Winter Ozone Distribution within the Boundary Layer in Shanghai Based on Hexacopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platform

“…According to three pairs of ozone profiles, although there were slight variations in ozone concentrations, the ozone measurements of the POM have also been generally consistent with the instruments used on a tethered balloon platform [38]. As for hexacopter UAV platforms, Guimarães et al [23] used the same platform (M600) and ozone monitor (POM), and successfully obtained fifty-seven ozone profiles from March to May, 2018 in Brazil, indicating the possible use of UAV in improving atmospheric measurements of ozone. In this study, the comparison results of two pairs of ozone profiles are presented in Figure S2 and Table S1, which also indicate good consistency between the two platforms.…”

“…Compared with fixed-wing UAV platforms, multi-rotor UAV platforms do not provide additional contaminants, and rarely have requirements for takeoff sites. Consequently, multi-rotor UAV platforms are much more useful when it comes to performing field observations within the boundary layers [18][19][20]23,24].…”

Using a Micro Sampler on a Drone to Extract Organic Vapors—A Case Study of Monitoring Industrial Pollution

“…Optical and electrochemical micro detectors have been used on a drone to detect the gaseous compounds and particle matter (PM). Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3) and methane (CH4), are the main monitored gaseous compounds (Chiba, et al, 2019;Gu, et al, 2018;Guimarães, et al, 2019;Huang, 2013;Schuyler and Guzman, 2017;Villa, et al, 2016). PM2.5 (diameter < 2.5 m) and PM10 (diameter < 10 m) are the main PM measurement targets (Gu, et al, 2018;Zhou, et al 2018).…”

Optimization and Representativeness of Atmospheric Chemical Sampling by Hovering Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Over Tropical Forests

“…Hovering UAVs of 25 kg and lighter are especially promising for filling data gaps in near‐surface concentrations for species that are horizontally heterogeneous above the landscape on scales of 10–1,000 m (Chang et al., 2018; McKinney et al., 2019). Atmospheric measurements can be achieved by mounting compact sensors or samplers onto UAVs of 1–25 kg (Aurell et al., 2017; Black et al., 2018; Guimarães et al., 2019, 2020; B. Liu et al., 2020; McKinney et al., 2019; Neumann et al., 2019; Ye et al., 2020). For example, Aurell et al.…”