Measurements from the University of Colorado RAAVEN Uncrewed Aircraft System during ATOMIC

Abstract

Between 24 January and 15 February 2020, small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUASs) were deployed to Morgan Lewis (Barbados) as part of the Atlantic Tradewind Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC), a sister project to the ElUcidating the RolE of Cloud-Circulation Coupling in ClimAte (EUREC4A) project. The observations from ATOMIC and EUREC4A were aimed at improving our understanding of trade-wind cumulus clouds and the environmental regimes supporting them and involved the deployment of a wide variety of observational assets, including aircraft, ships, surface-based systems, and profilers. The current paper describes ATOMIC observations obtained using the University of Colorado Boulder RAAVEN (Robust Autonomous Aerial Vehicle – Endurant Nimble) sUAS. This platform collected nearly 80 h of data throughout the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere, sampling the near-shore environment upwind from Barbados. Data from these platforms are publicly available through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Center for Environmental Intelligence (NCEI) archive. The primary DOI for the quality-controlled dataset described in this paper is https://doi.org/10.25921/jhnd-8e58 (de Boer et al., 2021).