Welcome to the SCALES Community!
The Small-UAS Coordination for Atmospheric Low-Level Environmental Sampling (SCALES) is the 2024 ISARRA Flight Week deployment project.
- MicroSCALES focuses on the Tulsa, OK area, targeting urban heat island (UHI) effects and urban turbulence. UHI studies aim to characterize how differences in sensible and latent heat in the lower atmosphere between urban and rural land cover manifests in thermodynamic vertical profiles examined through the lens of their theoretical impact on deep convection. Turbulence sampling focuses on urban-induced turbulence and will provide important datasets for validating high-fidelity large eddy simulations like those from NCAR's FastEddy.
- MesoSCALES will deploy a 3D mesonet with 10+ sites between Tulsa and the I-35 corridor. These profiles will provide crucial context for MicroSCALES and test the 3D mesonet concept, expanding beyond previous limited multisite deployments. Bringing mesoscale observing networks into the vertical opens doors for improvements in data assimilation, model verification, human forecasting, artificial intelligence applications, climate monitoring, seasonal-to-subseasonal prediction, and many more applications across a diverse range of disciplines.
- The project integrated recent technical advancements and aims to standardize data formats according to WMO guidelines. This coordination supported the WMO UAS Demonstration Campaign and addresses diverse research interests in the ISARRA community.
In addition to scientific research outcomes, SCALES intended to advance understanding of the observation and data systems required for rapid weather reporting, flight planning, and airspace management crucial for increasing busy and complex low-altitude operations. The deployment also facilitated collaboration with Urban Air Mobility stakeholders, demonstrating airspace deconfliction tools and capabilities for safe UAS operations beyond visual line of sight. This effort can showcase current capabilities and demonstrate the possibilities for future advanced air mobility and national airspace integration
SCALES Leadership
| Tyler Bell, OU |
tyler.bell@ou.edu | mesoSCALES Co-Lead Intercomparison |
|---|---|---|
| Adam Houston, Univ. Nebraska |
ahouston2@unl.edu | microSCALES Co-Lead Urban Heat Island |
| James Pinto, NCAR |
pinto@ucar.edu | Data Lead microSCALES Co-Lead Turbulence/LES |
| Elizabeth Smith, NOAA NSSL |
elizabeth.smith@noaa.gov | Overall Lead mesoSCALES Co-Lead NOAA airspace contact |
For SCALES Community Members
Some notes and reminders:
- Our community has agreed on a common set of authorship guidelines to govern interactions with these datasets and collaborations moving forward. You will find it listed in the 'references' section of the SCALES coda page.
- There is a live matrix reflecting contact information for various teams/platforms and their observations on the SCALES coda page.
- Information continues to develop and be shared in the post-deployment phase of SCALES! Content can be accessed in a few ways:
- Updates and content shared on the SCALES coda page
- Interactions in SCALES channels within the ISARRA Slack workspace
- Announcements shared via the SCALES google group.
If you are a SCALES or community member (or related) without access to these resources, please connect with the SCALES leadership group for more information.