Experience in the quadcopter-based meteorological observations in the atmospheric boundary layer

Recent developments of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) opens wide opportunities for their application for in-situ meteorological measurements in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). In this study we consider the experience of ABL measurements with a mass-market quadcopter DJI Phantom 4 Pro, equipped with temperature, humidity, pressure and infra-red surface temperature sensors. The quadcopter was used during a field experimental campaign in the northern Russia in winter for several types of measurements: hovering near the automatic weather station for a verification (1); vertical transects within the lowest 500 m in order to obtain the vertical temperature profiles and compare them with observations of the microwave temperature profiler MTP-5HE (2); horizontal transects over an unfreezing polynya (3). Additional verification was performed near the high meteorological mast in Obninsk. Listed experiments have shown that quadcopter-based system is a promising and usable tool for ABL measurements. However, its application requires a multi-step data processing framework, which is presented in this study.