Priority 2: Developing New Instrumentation

Advances in research on weather, climate, the water cycle, chemistry and dynamics of the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, NCAR is tasked with developing a new generation of robust, inexpensive, easily deployable, and versatile instrument systems to address the needs of weather, climate, water cycle, and atmospheric chemistry research. space weather and solar physics, and biogeosciences all require capabilities beyond our current suite of airborne and ground-based instruments. NCAR is tasked with developing a new generation of robust, inexpensive, easily deployable, and versatile instrument systems to address these needs. Our extensive and talented scientific and engineering staff continually create and test new instrumentation for studying the links between atmospheric composition and the biogeosciences, with systems for quantifying the surface-atmosphere exchange of gases and aerosols on whole-plant, whole-canopy, and regional scales using mobile laboratories and research aircraft.

FY 2006 Acomplishments

During FY 2006, NCAR continued to conduct robust instrumentation development activities. We completed the airborne Difference Frequency Generation (DFG) absorption spectrometer to measure trace gases such as formaldehyde and to further our understanding of how ozone forms. Instrument designers also performed a complex and successful rescue of measurements from the space-based High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS), a program funded by NASA.

CAPRIS, a new suite of radars and lidars that allow for unprecedented combination of coincident observations of precipitation, winds, cloud microphysics, water vapor, ozone and aerosols all on one platform is in the beginning stages of development. The Driftsonde made its maiden operational voyages across the western plains of Africa and over the Atlantic Ocean following and taking data on storms that may become deadly hurricanes.

Program Plan

NCAR has nearly completed a sophisticated gondola that will be carried approximately 25 miles into the atmosphere by a giant balloon and will house a solar telescope that will capture images of the Sun's outer surface at a higher resolution than ever before. Closer to Earth, NCAR's adaptive sensor array wireless mesh network communication system will allow the deployment of numerous low-power instruments in a variety of complex environments.