MUSAS Projects

The ground and air vehicles that make up the MUSAS instrumentation fleet have been used in many previous field deployments in the past decade. Below are several of the NSF-funded field campaigns on which we have collaborated. We have also participated in projects funded by NASA, the Department of Energy, the Office of Naval 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó, and NOAA, among others.

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NSF-funded 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

This two-year field campaign was designed to close critical observational knowledge gaps in hail research by exploiting an almost entirely mobile observational fleet to ensure opportunistic sampling of convection wherever it occurs.Ìý

Capabilities Demonstrated: A camera was mounted on the RAAVEN to measure and record hail swaths over large areas immediately after storms had passed.Ìý

Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Award

Period of Performance: 09/01/2024 - 08/31/2028Ìý

Principal Investigators:Ìý

: Atmospheric and Environmental 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó
: Central Michigan University
: Northern Illinois University
: National Center for Atmospheric 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

Location: The U.S. Central Plains and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains

This campaign was designed to develop the most thorough understanding to date of warm season boundary layer thermodynamic and kinematic structure due to inland advection of the marine atmospheric boundary layer in the Great Lakes coastal environment.

Capabilities Demonstrated: The InterMet CopterSonde 3 was used on the coastline of Lake Michigan to generate near-surface thermodynamic and wind profile structures.Ìý

Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Award AGS

Period of Performance: 04/01/2024 - 03/31/2027

Principal Investigator: , Central Michigan University

Location: Western Michigan, along the coastline of Lake Michigan

TORUS-LItE provided a focused, single-field-season follow-on to TORUS that targets data collection using a subset of TORUS assets focused on the supercell left-flank to better understand its role in tornadogenesis. Ìý

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN was deployed with its standard pressure, temperature, humidity, and 3D wind sensors to collect data on small-scale structures within the left-flank of storms.

Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Award AGS

Period of Performance: 05/01/2023 - 04/30/2026

Principal Investigator: , University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Location: Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado

Ths "Wisconsin's Dynamic Influence on Shoreline Circulations on Ozone" (WiscoDISCO) campaign targeted poor air quality days impacted by lake breeze circulations. CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó's RAAVEN teamed up with a DJI Quadcopter crewed by Purdue University to make observations of a shoreline environment impacted by a shallow marine layer, where vertical mixing and pollutant transport are key to understanding pollution events at the surface.

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN was deployed to measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speed to better understand air mass boundaries and their impact on air pollution.Ìý

Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Award AGS

Period of Performance: 07/01/2019 - 06/30/2023

Principal Investigator: , University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

Location: Southeastern Wisconsin

TORUS was a collaborative research project funded by the NSF and NOAA to advance understanding of supercells and tornadogenesis. TORUS involved more than 200 scientists and engineers who led data collection on 46 supercell thunderstorms across three field seasons.

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN was deployed with its standard pressure, temperature, humidity, and 3D wind sensors to collect data on small-scale structures within supercells.

Sponsor: National Science Foundation, Award AGS

Period of Performance: 09/01/2018 - 02/28/2023

Principal Investigator: , University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Location: The project covered 367,000 square miles, stretching from North Dakota to Texas and Iowa to Wyoming and Colorado

Previous Funded 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó (Other Sponsors)

In this collaboration, aerosols were measured within the volcanic fog of Kilauea volcano, located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, to test instrument capabilities for a potential deployment on Venus.Ìý

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN was equipped with an autofluorescence nephelometer (AFN) built by Droplet Measurement Technologies to measure the size and composition of aerosols.

Sponsor: National Aeronautics & Space Administration, 80NSSC24K1260

Period of Performance: 07/01/2024 - 06/30/2026

Principal Investigator: , Georgia Institute of Technology

Location: Kilauea volcano, located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

To better understand the drivers of convective storms in the greater Houston (Texas, USA) area, the US Department of Energy and research partners conducted the Tracking Aerosol Convection Interactions Experiment () project during 2021-2022.Ìý

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN was equipped to make measurements of atmospheric thermodynamic state, winds and turbulence, and aerosol size distribution.

Sponsor: Department of Energy Atmospheric System 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó (ASR) program (DE-SC0021381)

Period of Performance: 09/15/2020 - 09/14/2025

Principal Investigator: , CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó. TRACER PI, .

Location: Houston, Texas area

ATOMIC was the U.S. complement to the European field campaign called . This collaborative effort involved a unique combination of ships, piloted and remotely-controlled aircraft, and remotely-controlled ocean vehicles to characterize ocean and atmospheric properties.Ìý

Capabilities Demonstrated: The RAAVEN gathered 80 hours of data at elevations up to 1km to sample near-shore 3D winds.Ìý

Sponsor: NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory

Period of Performance: 01/01/2020 - 03/31/2020

Principal Investigator: , CU 91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

Location: Barbados