OSU scientist Michael Wing flies a UAV equipped with a fiber-optic temperature sensing cable over farm fields near Hermiston, Oregon. Photo: Robert Predosa.

by AUVSI News

Oregon State University, through part of a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, is measuring atmospheric temperatures in the boundary layer with fiber optic cables suspended from unmanned aircraft.



Until now, only static measurements could be taken in the boundary layer, the lowest part of the Earth’s atmosphere.



It is “a fundamentally new way to look at the lower atmosphere,” says John Selker, hydrologist and professor at OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. “It’s like living with 20-200 vision and then getting a good pair of glasses. You see a different universe.”



According to Selker the boundary layer is important, because “it’s where processes interact, where synergies occur” between air, water and Earth, “and temperature is a critical driver of these interactions.”



Selker and colleagues Michael Wing and Chad Higgins began at sunrise and suspended a thin, 400-foot fiber optic cable from a quadcopter and flew at 30 miles an hour with the tip of the cable just touching the ground. They captured temperature readings every 13 centimeters by measuring tiny pulses of light passing through the spun-glass strands of the cable. The fiber optics can detect differences in temperature down to 0.01 degrees Celsius.



“These technologies together will add orders of magnitude to the precision and resolutions of our atmospheric measurements,” says Selker. “We’ll be able to take a continuous slice of data through space and time, getting information that no one has been able to capture before.”



This research will gain valuable data to further an understanding of how clouds and rainstorms develop, how air pollution gets diluted, how pollen moves across the landscape and other atmospheric dynamics, according to a university press release.

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