Goal 5, Priority 1: Enabling Innovative Field Experiments and Measurement Campaigns
The accuracy, robustness, and performance of weather, climate, and chemistry models depend on sound theory and accurate measurements. NCAR leadership in the area of field program planning and implementation provides a critical service to the community, and we are proud of our achievements in this area. The Earth Observing Laboratory maintains a large suite of NSF-funded state-of-the-art Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities to collect data that will advance understanding of atmospheric and Earth processes in support of community research.
Maintaining flexibility and responsiveness, NCAR serves as the coordination point for scientific field campaigns, offering services ranging from advice and consultation during the initial stages of planning to field design and project implementation plans, tailored and specialized logistics support, the fielding, operation, and maintenance of scientific instrumentation, real-time data communication, organizational and operational management, and the coordination of educational activities.
FY2007 Accomplishments
In the early part of FY2007, the NSF/NCAR Facilities Assessment Team developed an interactive database that will be populated with descriptions of systems, platforms, networks, and emerging technologies that are provided by community experts. Supported on a Web site, the database will provide descriptive information on atmospheric science facilities and instrumentation in a consistent, easy-to-read format as a resource for the broad atmospheric science and related communities.
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EOL scientist Bill Brown does a last minute check of atmospheric conditions before he launches a sounding balloon off the R/V Knorr during CLIMODE, an experiment which studied the loss of heat from the North Atlantic sea into the atmosphere.
EOL revised and updated its Virtual Operations Center (VOC) proposal based on feedback from reviewers and a Town Hall Meeting that occurred at the annual American Meteorological Society meeting in January 2007. In the summer of 2007, the NSF modified the direction and scope for the VOC proposal, recommending that it be a part of the Mid-Sized Infrastructure (MSI) proposal process. Preliminary MSI proposals will be solicited in the fall of this year and the highest priority subset will be asked to submit a full proposal in the spring of 2008, with awards expected by October 2008. We intend to submit a revised VOC proposal under these new guidelines and timeline.
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Twice a year, EOL hosts the Observing Facilities Assessment Panel (OFAP), an NCAR-driven community process that provides technical and operational assessment of requests associated with the use of NSF’s Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities in the field.
Twice a year, EOL hosts the Observing Facilities Assessment Panel and coordinates among panel members, PIs, facility providers, EOL staff, and NSF to assess the feasibility and cost of NSF-funded field projects. The OFAP is an NCAR-driven community process that provides technical and operational assessment of requests associated with the use of NSF’s Lower Atmospheric Observing Facilities in the field. The panel, which is composed of a diverse pool of scientists with broad experience in observational studies of Earth system sciences, meets at NCAR to provide valuable feedback and evaluation to facility managers and the user community concerning experiment design, data management issues and the appropriate and efficient use of NSF resources as related to a specific field campaign. OFAP meetings occurred per usual in 2007.
Among the 2007 field programs that NCAR participated in are:
- The Meteor Crater Experiment (METCRAX) program, which is investigating the structure and evolution of temperature inversions - or cold-air pools - that form on a daily basis in topographic basins and valleys. As part of this research, a one-month-long field experiment was conducted in October 2006 in Arizona's Meteor Crater, a simple near-ideal topographic basin formed by the impact of a meteor. In this basin, the physical processes leading to the buildup and breakdown of temperature inversions and the formation of atmospheric seiches (atmospheric oscillations in the basin caused by wind disturbances at the basin crest) can be studied without the difficulties introduced by more complex topography. In support of the METCRAX experiment, EOL provided an integrated sounding system (ISS) – a self-contained meteorological observing system – and seven integrated surface flux facilities (ISFF).
- Inhibition of Snowfall by Pollution Aerosols (ISPA 2006) – ISPA studies the link between pollution aerosols and snowfall rates in the Mount Werner area near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. EOL provided the ISS-Multiple Antenna Profiler (MAPR) facility in early 2007 to obtain temperature and humidity profiles with altitude, cloud top height and temperature, depths of the snow layer, crystal fall speed and riming extent. Data gathered from the experiment will be checked for quality control and offered to the research community as a data product in FY2008.
- EOL supported CHATS (see project description under Goal 1, Priority 2), deploying an ISFF and the Raman-shifted, Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL) in a walnut grove in Dixon, California during March and April 2007. Data gathered from the experiment was checked for quality in FY2007 and will be offered to the research community as a data product in FY2008.
- The CLIvar MOde water Dynamics Experiment (CLIMODE)–The CLIMODE project is another CLIVAR-related oceanographic project that intends to clarify the effect of dynamics of 18-degree water (EDW) by describing the formation, evolution, storage, dispersal and large-scale consequences of EDW. The expected end result is a better understanding of air-sea fluxes in high exchange regions of the ocean and improved ocean physics parameters for inclusion into climate models. In February and March of 2007, EOL deployed a shipborne ISS to contribute to these measurements by providing basic wind and thermodynamic profiles for the boundary layer by providing measurements of vertical wind and Doppler spectra continuously within over the oceans surface. Data will be made available in FY2008.
Click to enlarge. The NSF/NCAR C-130 flies by a beach on Christmas Island during the PASE project in August, 2007. The Pacific Atmospheric Sulfur Experiment (PASE) took place in August and September of 2007. EOL provided the C-130 research aircraft to PASE researchers, who are taking a comprehensive look at sulfur chemistry in a pristine marine trade wind system. The base of operations for this experiment is Christmas Island, Kiribati, a remote area that offers a highly stable trade wind inversion with little chance of precipitation, high solar intensity and horizontal winds constant in direction and speed over several days.
In FY2007 ESSL/HAO continued to support development and operation of community instruments in collaboration with the National Solar Observatory (NSO), including spectro-polarmetric post-focus instrumentation at the NSO Dunn Telescope at Sacramento Peak Observatory at Sunspot, NM. These instruments provide detailed information on atmospheric and solar phenomena, which scientists use to improve their understand of space weather, as well as the Earth and Sun system interactions. Details on the many exciting instruments supported by HAO are available in the ESSL LAR.
FY2008 Plans for Strategic Priority 1
EOL is developing a strategic partnership with Colorado State University to create a national radar facility. Both institutions support 10-cm, multiparameter Doppler radars that will be jointly operated in this new partnership. A key objective is to create a national test bed that other institutes and agencies can use for research and education. The radars will be in continuous operation, and university students will be encouraged to propose small (less than 20-hour) projects for collecting thesis-related research data. In FY2008, the two institutes will formalize plans.
EOL’s Facilities Assessment Team has begun asking community members to submit information on instruments and facilities, and is asking them submit revisions to resources already included in the database. Seven subcommittees met separately in May to review the information submitted thus far. In late September 2007, a larger community workshop followed the planned NSF Facilities Users' Workshop to gain input on database and capabilities gaps. EOL will continue to support maintenance of this Web site in FY2008/2009, and thereafter.
The HIPPO study will measure cross sections of concentrations of atmospheric and greenhouse gases approximately pole-to-pole, from the surface to the tropopause, four to six times, during different seasons, over a 2.5- to 3-year period beginning in 2008. The scientific questions motivating HIPPO focus on understanding global sources and sinks for CO2, CH4, and other carbon cycle gases, and more broadly determining large-scale rates of tracer transport in the atmosphere. This experiment would not be feasible without the GV, and will establish a new paradigm for facility allocation. It is the first time that NSF has approved a multi-year allocation of an observational platform. Such allocations may become more common with the GV.
EOL will provide driftsonde support for the proposed THORPEX Pacific Asian Regional Campaign experiment in September of 2008. T-PARC is a multi-national field campaign that addresses the shorter-range dynamics and forecast skill over one region (Eastern Asia and the western North Pacific), and the downstream impact on medium-range dynamics and forecast skill of another region (in particular, the eastern North Pacific and North America). The driftsonde and ELectra DOppler Radar (ELDORA) are two primary platforms that have been requested for this experiment.
The Ice In Clouds Experiment (ICE-L) will begin in November 2007. The objective of the ICE-L experiment is to show that, under given conditions, direct ice nucleation measurement(s), or other specific measurable characteristics of the aerosol, can be used to predict the number of ice particles forming by nucleation mechanisms in selected clouds. The PIs also seek improved quantitative understanding of the roles of thermodynamic pathway, location within the cloud, and temporal dependency. The project, led by Andy Heymsfield (NCAR), will be based at the Rocky Mountain Municipal Airport in Broomfield Colorado. The NSF/NCAR C-130 and the Wyoming Cloud Radar will support the project during November and December 2007.
In FY2008 Hector Socas-Navarro and the ESSL/HAO instrumentation group will complete the Spectro-Polarimeter for Infrared and Optical Regions (SPINOR) instrument in partnership with NSO, mating it to the new adaptive optics system at the NSO Dunn Telescope at Sacremento Peak Observatory at Sunspot, NM. SPINOR will allow researchers to make observations combining simultaneous visible and IR spectro-polarimetry of the magnetic fields in the solar photosphere and chromosphere, offering substantial scientific advantage over the visible for studies of solar magnetism.
Related Lab Annual Report Sections:
Goal 5, Priority 1