PHASM as a Novel Atmospheric and Air–Sea Interface Sensing Platform for Coastal Boundary Layer Assessment
Keywords
UAS; atmospheric sensing; sea–atmosphere interface; transpiration; marine boundary layer; coastal meteorology; environmental monitoring; passive sampling; bio-inspired sensing; air–sea exchange
Presenter Abstract
Understanding coupled processes at the sea–atmosphere interface remains a major challenge in coastal meteorology, particularly in regions influenced by land–sea breeze circulations and rapid convective initiation. Traditional atmospheric observations over coastal waters are spatially sparse and often fail to capture fine-scale thermodynamic variability associated with evaporation, transpiration-like moisture exchange, aerosol transport, and biologically mediated air–sea interactions. This presentation explores a novel extension of the Passive Health Assessment for Sea Mammals (PHASM) system toward atmospheric and environmental sensing applications using uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS).
Originally developed as a minimally invasive airborne sampling platform for marine mammal hormone assessment, PHASM integrates precision low-altitude flight operations, passive sample collection, and environmental exposure analysis in dynamic marine environments. The system demonstrates capabilities highly applicable to atmospheric science missions, particularly within the marine boundary layer and near-surface coastal interface. The proposed adaptation would leverage passive collection substrates and compact environmental instrumentation mounted on small UAS to characterize moisture transport, salt and organic aerosol distributions, biological particulates, and volatile compounds associated with oceanic and estuarine processes.
This concept introduces the potential for biologically inspired atmospheric assessment in which trace compounds, aerosols, condensates, and moisture signatures collected within the lowest tens of meters above the ocean surface may provide insight into coupled ocean–atmosphere exchange processes. Such measurements could support improved understanding of evaporation dynamics, vegetation and marine transpiration analogs, boundary layer stratification, and pre-convective environmental variability. The approach is particularly relevant to ISARRA Flight Week objectives involving land–sea and land–river breeze interactions along the Florida coastline.
Potential operational architectures include coordinated UAS transects through evolving coastal convergence boundaries, repeated vertical profiling in the marine surface layer, and distributed swarm-based sampling to resolve microscale spatial gradients. The presentation will discuss the underlying PHASM platform architecture, proposed atmospheric sensing adaptations, operational considerations for low-altitude maritime UAS deployments, and opportunities for integration with numerical weather prediction and coastal observational networks.
The work highlights how systems originally designed for ecological and conservation research may be repurposed to provide new observational capabilities for atmospheric science, advancing interdisciplinary approaches to understanding coupled environmental systems.
Presentations
Presented in Session 3: Platform Development III
PHASM as a Novel Atmospheric and Air–Sea Interface Sensing Platform for Coastal Boundary Layer Assessment
Understanding coupled processes at the sea–atmosphere interface remains a major challenge in coastal meteorology, particularly in regions influenced by land–sea breeze circulations and rapid convective initiation. Traditional atmospheric observations over coastal waters are spatially sparse and often fail to capture fine-scale thermodynamic variability associated with evaporation, transpiration-like moisture exchange, aerosol transport, and biologically mediated air–sea interactions. This presentation explores a novel extension of the Passive Health Assessment for Sea Mammals (PHASM) system toward atmospheric and environmental sensing applications using uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS).
Originally developed as a minimally invasive airborne sampling platform for marine mammal hormone assessment, PHASM integrates precision low-altitude flight operations, passive sample collection, and environmental exposure analysis in dynamic marine environments. The system demonstrates capabilities highly applicable to atmospheric science missions, particularly within the marine boundary layer and near-surface coastal interface. The proposed adaptation would leverage passive collection substrates and compact environmental instrumentation mounted on small UAS to characterize moisture transport, salt and organic aerosol distributions, biological particulates, and volatile compounds associated with oceanic and estuarine processes.
This concept introduces the potential for biologically inspired atmospheric assessment in which trace compounds, aerosols, condensates, and moisture signatures collected within the lowest tens of meters above the ocean surface may provide insight into coupled ocean–atmosphere exchange processes. Such measurements could support improved understanding of evaporation dynamics, vegetation and marine transpiration analogs, boundary layer stratification, and pre-convective environmental variability. The approach is particularly relevant to ISARRA Flight Week objectives involving land–sea and land–river breeze interactions along the Florida coastline.
Potential operational architectures include coordinated UAS transects through evolving coastal convergence boundaries, repeated vertical profiling in the marine surface layer, and distributed swarm-based sampling to resolve microscale spatial gradients. The presentation will discuss the underlying PHASM platform architecture, proposed atmospheric sensing adaptations, operational considerations for low-altitude maritime UAS deployments, and opportunities for integration with numerical weather prediction and coastal observational networks.
The work highlights how systems originally designed for ecological and conservation research may be repurposed to provide new observational capabilities for atmospheric science, advancing interdisciplinary approaches to understanding coupled environmental systems.