 Prototype buoy mounted wind profiler near San Diego, CA. |
Observing Systems Team
James Jordan, Team Lead
The Observing Network Group deploys the Division's sensors in various field programs. This requires engineering advances that focus on adapting equipment for use in extreme environments and on improving automation and reliability. The network consists of fixed weather radar systems and acoustic sensors (sodars) to measure wind and temperature fields in the lower atmosphere, scanning weather radar systems that provide the real-time capability of mapping out radial velocity and reflectivity of cloud particles, high speed instruments to measure turbulent heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes, ceilometers to measure cloud base height and to estimate cloud fraction, GPS rawinsonde systems, a tethered meteorological balloon that provides boundary layer profiles to 3 km, as well as in situ instrumentation to measure the radiative and sub-surface components of the surface energy balance in addition to the standard meteorological parameters. The group has deployed networks of instruments in many air quality, air-sea interaction, polar processes, and precipitation experiments. Currently the group is deploying the first of up to eleven 449-MHz wind profilers in support of the Tethered Atmospheric Radar System (TARS). In addition to field work, the Observing Network Group improves existing instruments to allow measurements to be made in locations where data is not available. For example, signal processing improvements to our existing wind profiler network will extend the radar s range, reduce interference, allow use in high-clutter environments, and enable the radar to produce high time resolution winds. These improvements will make wind measurements possible on ocean buoys, near forest fires, and in dense urban environments. A recent innovation to the scanning weather radar system allows the mapping of rainfall rates by comparing relative phase delays of horizontally- and vertically-polarized radar signals in rain. Air quality applications have led to integration of a sodar with the radar wind profiler to provide highly- resolved wind fields in the region of the lower atmosphere below the minimum range of the wind profiler.