Using high resolution GPS tracking data of bird flight for meteorological observations

AbstractBird flight is strongly influenced by local meteorological conditions. With increasing amounts of high-frequency GPS data of bird movement becoming available, as tags become cheaper and lighter, opportunities are created to obtain large datasets of quantitative meteorological information from observations conducted by bird-borne tags. In this article we propose a method for estimating wind velocity and convective velocity scale from tag-based high-frequency GPS data of soaring birds in flight.The flight patterns of soaring birds are strongly influenced by the interactions between atmospheric boundary layer processes and the morphology of the bird; climb rates depend on vertical air motion, flight altitude depends on boundary layer height, and drift off the bird’s flight path depends on wind speed and direction. We combine aerodynamic theory of soaring bird flight, the bird’s morphological properties, and three-dimensional GPS measurements at 3-s intervals to estimate the convective velocity scale ...

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