Outcomes of the NCAR / EOL Workshop Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Atmospheric Research

In February 2017, NCAR/EOL hosted a Community Workshop on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for Atmospheric Research. Over 100 scientists, program managers, engineers and students participated in this workshop. About half of all participants came from US universities with programs in UAS based research or atmospheric research. The other half of participants came from federal agencies (NOAA, NASA, and DOE), international institutions and private companies. The focus of this workshop was to advance the use of UAS on all scales of atmospheric research and to discuss the needs of this rapidly growing research community. The workshop discussed key areas of UAS based science, platforms, instrumentation and operations. White papers covering these topics as well as the report about a community survey, which EOL conducted in summer of 2016, laid the groundwork for this workshop. Discussions were stimulated through invited talks covering these four topics. Smaller breakout groups provided an environment for stronger involvement of all participants. Reports on the breakout sessions followed by plenary discussions brought the smaller exchanges of ideas together. The workshop closed with a final discussion on all topics, summarizing common themes and highlighting essential needs for this community, which should be addressed to support progress of this emerging technology. Here we present key results of the discussions and summarize essential information about the current state and the needs of this new research area. This workshop has been a milestone in developing a coordinated effort to support the NSF supported UAS atmospheric research community.