University of Nebraska UAS profiling during LAPSE-RATE

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes the data collected by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) as part of the field deployment during the Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) flight campaign in July 2018. UNL deployed two multirotor unmanned aerial systems (UASs) at various sites in the San Luis Valley (Colorado, USA) for data collection in support of three science missions: convection-initiation, boundary layer transition, and cold air drainage flow. We conducted 172 flights resulting in over 1300 minutes of cumulative flight time. Our novel design for the sensor housing onboard the UAS was employed in these flights to meet the aspiration and shielding requirements of the temperature/humidity sensors, and attempt to separate them from the mixed turbulent airflow from the propellers. Data presented in this paper include time-stamped temperature and humidity data collected from the sensors, along with the three-dimensional position and velocity of the UAS. Data are quality controlled and time-synchronized using a zero-order-hold interpolation without additional post processing. The full dataset is also made available for download at (https://doi.org/10. 5281/zenodo.4306086 (Islam et al. , 2020)).