LAPSE-RATE: Advancement of Science and Technology during the 2018 ISARRA Flight Week

As part of the 2018 International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely-piloted Aircraft (ISARRA) conference, a one-week field campaign was organized in Colorado's San Luis Valley. This "flight week", titled Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation - a Remotely-operated Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) included participants from a variety of US and international institutions and companies. Over the course of the week, over 1200 research flights were conducted between the participating teams. These flights were coordinated to provide opportunities for system comparison and calibration, but also to provide unique perspective on a variety of scientific questions. Specific topics pursued during the week included convective initiation, the morning boundary layer transition and density-driven drainage flows. In addition to the unmanned aircraft, ground-based instrumentation including doppler lidars and other remote sensors as well as surface meteorological instrumentation were deployed. Additionally, radiosondes were launched from two locations in the valley at a frequency up to five-times per day. Finally, high resolution (100 m) numerical simulations were completed to both provide forecasts for the operation as well as to have a model dataset which can be evaluated using the collected measurements. In this presentation we will provide an overview of the campaign, insight into the operational considerations associated with such a large deployment, initial scientific results based on the measurements collected, and information on airspace coordination with the FAA and local pilot groups.