Spatially Sampled Turbulence Measurements Acquired Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

To address the challenge of spatially interrogating the turbulent structure of the atmospheric boundary layer over a wide range of length scales we use highly instrumented, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This approach has the advantage of being able to spatially sample the flow field over a large range of spatial scales while providing a reduced reliance on Taylor’s frozen flow hypothesis regarding assumptions of temporal evolution of the turbulence. This talk will provide an overview of the systems which have been developed and are being used as part of this work, as well as present atmospheric data acquired by these systems as part of the ISARRA LAPSE-RATE measurement campaign in Colorado's San Luis valley.