Surface layer profiles of air temperature and humidity measured from unmanned aircraft

The atmospheric surface layer couples processes in the atmosphere with those at the land surface, but is not fully understood for heterogeneous land surfaces. A small remotely piloted aircraft was flown during the ReScDA experiment to measure profiles of heat and humidity in the surface layer near boundaries between different land cover types to study atmospheric structure over heterogeneous terrain. The aircraft payload included sensors for temperature, humidity and position. Extensive data processing has been performed to check data quality and coordinate the datasets created (to common time and position references). Initial results show the expected general features of the surface layer profiles of temperature and humidity and also give details of structure near field boundaries, especially where there is strong contrast in surface properties and radiative forcing. The experiments also demonstrate that unmanned aircraft are practical tools for this form of atmospheric research.