This paper provides an overview of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign, held from 14 to 20 July 2018. This field campaign spanned a 1-week deployment to Colorado's San Luis Valley, involving over 100 students, scientists, engineers, pilots, and outreach coordinators. This overview paper provides insight into the campaign for a special issue focused on the datasets collected during LAPSE-RATE.

In July 2018, numerous weather sensing remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPASs) were flown in a flight week called Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). As part of LAPSE-RATE, ground-based remote and in situ systems were also deployed to supplement and enhance observations from the RPASs. These instruments include multiple Doppler lidars, thermodynamic profilers, and radiosondes. This paper describes data from these systems.

The dataset produced here was generated as part of a real-time demonstration of a new capability to provide fine-scale weather guidance to support small UAS operations. The nested model configuration enabled us to resolve large turbulent eddies that developed in response to daytime heating and demonstrated the current state of the science in coupling mesoscale forcing with a large eddy simulation (LES) model. Output from these real-time simulations was used for planning IOPs during LAPSE-RATE.

During July 2018, researchers from OU participated in the LAPSE-RATE field campaign in San Luis Valley, Colorado. The OU team completed 180 flights using three RPASs over the course of 6 d of operation to collect vertical profiles of the thermodynamic and kinematic state of the ABL. This article describes sampling strategies, data collection, platform intercomparibility, data quality, and the dataset's possible applications to convective initiation, drainage flows, and ABL transitions.

This paper provides an overview of measurements collected in south-central Colorado (USA) during the 2018 LAPSE-RATE campaign. The measurements described in this article were collected by mobile surface vehicles, including cars, trucks, and vans, and include measurements of thermodynamic quantities (e.g., temperature, humidity, pressure) and winds. These measurements can be used to study the evolution of the atmospheric boundary layer at a high-elevation site under a variety of conditions.

This article describes the systems, processes and procedures used by researchers from the University of Kentucky (UK) for the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, USA. Using unmanned aerial systems (UASs) as the primary data-gathering tool, UK supported multipoint, multisystem measurements of drainage flow, boundary layer transition, convection initiation and aerosol concentration.