Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer observations with the Small Unmanned Meteorological Observer (SUMO)

Between January 2012 and June 2017 a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS), known as the Small Unmanned Meteorological Observer (SUMO), was used to observe the state of the atmospheric boundary layer in the Antarctic. During six Antarctic field campaigns, 116 SUMO flights were completed. These flights...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Earth System Science Data
Main Authors: Cassano, John J., Nigro, Melissa A., Seefeldt, Mark W., Katurji, Marwan, Guinn, Kelly, Williams, Guy, DuVivier, Alice
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2021
Subjects:
article
Verlagsveröffentlichung
Antarc*
Antarctic
Ross Sea
Sea ice
United States Antarctic Program
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-969-2021
https://noa.gwlb.de/receive/cop_mods_00055874
https://noa.gwlb.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/cop_derivate_00055525/essd-13-969-2021.pdf
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/13/969/2021/essd-13-969-2021.pdf
Description
Summary:Between January 2012 and June 2017 a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS), known as the Small Unmanned Meteorological Observer (SUMO), was used to observe the state of the atmospheric boundary layer in the Antarctic. During six Antarctic field campaigns, 116 SUMO flights were completed. These flights took place during all seasons over both permanent ice and ice-free locations on the Antarctic continent and over sea ice in the western Ross Sea. Sampling was completed during spiral ascent and descent flight paths that observed the temperature, humidity, pressure and wind up to 1000 m above ground level and sampled the entire depth of the atmospheric boundary layer, as well as portions of the free atmosphere above the boundary layer. A wide variety of boundary layer states were observed, including very shallow, strongly stable conditions during the Antarctic winter and deep, convective conditions over ice-free locations in the summer. The Antarctic atmospheric boundary layer data collected by the SUMO sUAS, described in this paper, can be retrieved from the United States Antarctic Program Data Center (https://www.usap-dc.org, last access: 8 March 2021). The data for all flights conducted on the continent are available at https://doi.org/10.15784/601054 (Cassano, 2017), and data from the Ross Sea flights are available at https://doi.org/10.15784/601191 (Cassano, 2019).

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