A Tethered Air Blimp (TAB) for observing the microclimate over a complex terrain

Abstract

This study presents the first environmental monitoring field campaign of a newly developed Tethered Air Blimp (TAB) system to investigate the microclimate over a complex terrain. The use of a tethered balloon in complex terrains such as mines and tailings ponds is novel and the focus of the present study. The TAB system was fully developed and launched at a mining facility in northern Canada in May 2018. This study describes the key design features, the sensor payload on board, calibration, and the observations made by the TAB system. The system measured meteorological conditions including components of wind velocity vector, temperature, relative humidity, and pressure over the first few tens of metres of the atmospheric boundary layer. The measurements were made at two primary locations in the facility: (i) near a tailings pond and (ii) in a mine pit. TAB measured the dynamics of the atmosphere at different diurnal times (e.g. day versus night) and locations (near a tailings pond versus inside the mine). Such dynamics include mean and turbulence statistics pertaining to flow momentum and energy, and they are crucial in the understanding of emission fluxes from the facility in future studies. In addition, TAB can provide boundary conditions and validation datasets to support mesoscale dispersion modelling or computational fluid dynamics simulations for various transport models.