The Innovative Strategies for Observations in the Arctic Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ISOBAR) Field Campaign: Perspectives from the Univ. of Oklahoma

The ISOBAR (Innovative Strategies for Observations in the Arctic Atmospheric Boundary Layer) project aims to “increase our understanding of local to regional-scale processes within the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) in the Arctic environment.” A central theme of the project is to investigate processes that drive ABL structure and evolution under stable conditions, especially with the goal of improving numerical weather prediction and climate models. To this end, three field campaigns were conducted under the ISOBAR banner, which involved the collection of ABL data using surface measurements and small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in arctic conditions. The surface data consisted of measurements from in-situ instruments mounted on towers and observations from remote sensing instruments. A variety of sUAS with different sampling capacities were operated during these field campaigns. The University of Oklahoma (OU) joined the ISOBAR project for the final field campaign, which was held on the island of Hailuoto, Finland during February 2018. This presentation provides a general overview of the ISOBAR project with a focus on the contribution from OU’s Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling (CASS). The CASS group operated four sUAS during the campaign: two rotary-wing and two fixed-wing aircraft. The rotary-wing aircraft (CopterSonde) was developed and built by the CASS team. They were primarily operated to provide atmospheric soundings of wind, pressure, temperature, and humidity from the surface up to 1,800 m; however, they were also used to explore the turbulence structure in the lowest few 100 meters of the ABL. The fixed-wing aircraft used during the campaign was the Tuffwing Data Mapper, which is a commercially available platform. An autopilot system and sensors were added by CASS. One Tuffwing was used to sample CO₂ and the other was outfitted with a multi-spectral camera to conduct terrain mapping through photogrammetry. We provide descriptions of the aircraft and their sensors, show some results from the measurement campaign, and provide a general outlook of how sUAS can be used to expand boundary layer and turbulence measurements.