Development of a Long-Range and Light-Weight Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (AUAV) and Instrument Platform for the Global Albedo Project

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Ramanathan and Kosmatka, UCSDATM 0320802This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) development grant will support the design, fabrication and field testing of long duration affordable ($50,000 - $75,000) Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (AUAV) that have long duration (greater than 1 day) and long range (about five thousand kilometers required for flights from Southern California to Hawaii) with light instrument payloads (less than 5kg). Such AUAVs are not currently available.The instruments to be flown include a condensation particle counter, optical particle counter, cloud droplet probe, pyranometer, mult-channel airborne radiometer, cloud condensational nucleus counter, digital video camera, data acquisition system and aerosol inlet. The data gathered by the AUAV and this suite of instruments will be the first long-term in-situ data on cloudy sky albedo, aerosols and cloud microphysics in a climatologically important region (the Pacific Ocean).Broader Impacts: The AUAV will have a major impact on the education and training of engineers and atmospheric scientists in the UCSD campus, in particular because of the multi-disciplinary aspects of the experiment. The AUAV developed under this award will also benefit the entire atmospheric sciences community by the provision of a new and important observing capability relevant to research issues in weather and climate.