Atmospheric pollutants are a huge problem in today’s environment. Ozone is one of these pollutants. It is harmful to human health and is a main pollutant in photochemical smog. Counties near Lake Michigan in Eastern Wisconsin suffer from poor air quality due to high ozone events and are in nonattainment of federal ozone standards. This is due to lake breeze circulation patterns and trapping of ozone and its precursors over Lake Michigan. To collect data on air quality in this area we have recently purchased an Aurelia S6 drone as a measurement platform for ozone, temperature, humidity, pressure, and NO2. While some of these have been measured before via UAS, we have recently custom-built an NO2 instrument, so careful consideration needs to be done to mount and fly the instruments under safe conditions. Here, we describe the UAS capabilities, strategies for mounting instrumentation, and flight campaign protocols to comply with FAA regulations and gather data safely.
