CALIFORNIA BUSINESS MINUTE
Smog Bots
05-20-08
Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute.
Research scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego are
analyzing Southern California's potential for climate change in the effort to better
understand the sources of air pollution by using unmanned aircraft. The scientists
are operating autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, from a site at Edwards
Air Force Base. The study began its first sortie of data-gathering flights on April 2
and will continue through January 2009, offering researchers a chance to view seasonal
variations in air pollution.
The aircraft typically fly in formations of three, measuring a range of properties such as
the quantity and size of the aerosols on which cloud droplets form and the temperature,
humidity and the intensity of light that permeates clouds and masses of smog as they go.
The team from Scripps hopes to determine how much of Southern California's air pollution
comes from Asia, Mexico and from regions north of the state.
The aircraft will profile atmospheric conditions at altitudes ranging between 2,000 and 12,000
feet and will create a separate file for data collected during wildfires.
Because of Federal Aviation Administration regulations that prohibit unmanned aircraft from flying
in public airspace, the flight paths will be limited to military airspace, which is exempted from FAA
rules. The Scripps team hopes to conduct the flights at least once a month or as often as every two
weeks.
I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.
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