On the use of small unmanned aircraft system for the atmospheric surface layer measurements over the urbanized areas
Article
Figures
Metrics
Preview PDF
Reference
Related
Cited by
Materials
Abstract:
Measurements within the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) play a key role in understanding the exchanges of energy and mass between the land surface and the atmosphere. But the commonly used radiosonde and remote sensing observations have some limitations in capturing the details of the temperature and moisture variations in the lower ABL – surface layer. Small unmanned aircraft system (sUAS) is a good alternative because of its flexibility, low cost and capability to provide measurements of higher spatiotemporal resolution in the lower ABL. The goal of this study is to demonstrate whether the accurate and high spatiotemporal resolution thermodynamic profiles of the lower ABL over the urbanized areas could be obtained using sUAS. Twenty flights in total were conducted in Shanghai during winter (in December 2018) and spring (in March 2019) months, and 19 profiles (surface - 200 m) of temperature and moisture were collected. Measurements from automatic weather station (AWS) and radiosonde at the same site were used to evaluate these profiles. Results show that surface temperature and relative humidity derived by sUAS are close to those from AWS, with the mean differences of -0.5 ℃, 4.9% for winter flights and 0.9 ℃, -5.9% for spring flights. The general features of temperature and relative humidity profiles obtained from sUAS are consistent with those from radiosonde, such as temperature inversion near the ground and so on. These findings indicate that sUAS is capable of revealing detailed structures and variations of the lower ABL over the urbanized areas.