Towards vertical wind and turbulent flux estimation with multicopter uncrewed aircraft systems

Abstract

Vertical wind velocity and its fluctuations are essential parameters in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) to determine turbulent fluxes and scaling parameters for ABL processes. The typical instrument to measure fluxes of momentum and heat in the surface layer are sonic anemometers. Without the infrastructure of meteorological masts and above the typical heights of these masts, in situ point measurements of the three-dimensional wind vector are hardly available. We present a method to obtain the three-dimensional wind vector from avionic data of small multicopter uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS). To achieve a good accuracy in both average and fluctuating parts of the wind components, calibrated motor thrusts and measured accelerations by the UAS are used. In a validation campaign, in comparison to sonic anemometers on a 99 m mast, accuracies below 0.2ms-1 are achieved for the mean wind components and below 0.2m2s-2 for their variances. The spectra of variances and covariances show good agreement with the sonic anemometer up to 1 Hz temporal resolution. A case study of continuous measurements in a morning transition of a convective boundary layer with five UAS illustrates the potential of such measurements for ABL research.