UAS Used for Studying Impact of Harmful Particles
Four years ago, UAS were used to study the impact of black carbon, or soot, aerosol particles on the environment. The black carbon aerosol in this research originated in southeast Asia and spread to the northern Indian Ocean during the winter monsoon season.
The results of that study have now been analyzed, and the findings could go a long way in the field of global warming research.
Thanks to designs by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, each unmanned aircraft came equipped with special equipment to measure different things such as turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), aerosol particle concentration, black carbon concentrations, cloud droplet size and density, and temperature fluctuations.
Data collected through the air was combined with ground measurements collected at the Maldives Climate Observatory on Hanimaadhooa, which is known for being a background site for atmospheric and climate studies in South Asia.
The lead researcher for this round of exploration, Eric Wilcox, Ph.D., an atmospheric scientist at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute (DRI), explained the importance of this study.
“To completely understand the effects of these harmful aerosols on our climate and the modifications they cause to clouds and weather systems originating in the boundary layer, you have to first understand the turbulent dynamics of the air where the aerosols reside and the clouds form,” said Wilcox.
He went on to say, “The climate science community has long debated the impact of turbulence in the boundary layer and our research team set out to directly measure that, which hadn’t been done before.”
This study builds upon previous research led by Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps. During previous research from Ramanathan, through the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), he, along with colleagues, found that black carbon aerosols thrive in sunlight, making them a big contributor to global warming.
“The finding that black carbon warming of the boundary layer is suppressing turbulence is a cause for concern, since turbulence is one of the important ways by which pollution near the surface is transported away from human exposure.,” said Ramanathan. “Suppressing it can increase ground level pollution.”
Each professor believes that these studies using UAS can go a long way in the scientific community and its quest to learn new information via unmanned systems.
