Measuring turbulence height profiles in different environments

It is known that the strength of atmospheric turbulence varies with height above the ground. Several models exist which predict the variation of atmospheric turbulence with height above the ground. Measurements show good agreement with these predictions of atmospheric turbulence profiles for higher altitudes. However, the agreement is not very good in the surface layer, i.e. close to the ground. Although the measurements inherently have information about the near-ground environment in them, the models do not include the associated effects. A system to measure atmospheric turbulence at different heights is installed on towers in different environments. In the first instance, the system is installed on a tower on top of a (small) mountain near a mountain range, and on a tower located on flat ground in the desert. The system contains boxes with two LED lights (10cm apart) which are placed at heights close to the ground, starting from 5 meters and building all the way up to about 40 meters. These LEDs are imaged with a camera on an unmanned aerial vehicle, which allows for a lot of measurement flexibility. In this first instance, the measurements are made over horizontal paths, moving towards vertical, and slant paths afterwards. Using one pair of LEDs, one is able to determine the turbulence-induced optical tilt received by the camera in the direction parallel and perpendicular to the (horizontal) separation axis of the LEDs, which in turn can be used to determine C²_n.