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FIRE-ACE Ground Based Remote Sensing Information Site

This web site has been developed to bring together surface data from the SHEBA ice camp for each of the days during which the NASA/FIRE-ACE program had aircraft overflights. It has been formatted so that the surface data can be easily browsed for each day without having to go to multiple web sites. It is intended to aid in the selection of case studies, and expedite preliminary analysis. Some brief descriptions of the major characteristics of each day have been included which are based on an initial examination of these data.

It should be noted that in some cases, the products may not be completely calibrated and/or quality checked. The user is strongly encouraged to interact directly with the contacts provided before making extensive analysis efforts. Additional surface data sets may be added as they become available.

The author of this web page is Brandi McCarty. Members of the NOAA/ETL Arctic Research Team who contributed are Janet Intrieri, Brandi McCarty, Brooke Olson, Brad Orr, Michelle Ryan, Matthew Shupe, and Taneil Uttal.

Instruments

Depolarized and Backscatter Unattended Lidar (DABUL)
The Depolarization and Backscatter - Unattended Lidar is a pulsed laser-radar system operating at 523 nm wavelength (Alvarez et al. 1998). Range resolution is 30 meters, and time resolution is 5 seconds. This lidar system uses a low-energy laser with high repetition rates for good sensitivity while being completly eye-safe. The system produces two main fields of information: returned power, which qualitatively speaking depends on the density of the scatterers, and depolarization ratio, which gives an indication of the scatterers' shape and hence, phase (Sassen 1991). By thresholding on these two fields, information on cloud base and apparent top heights are determined. Further analysis of the fields renders cloud phase for all the layers detected. These type of information can be used to build upon the much needed Artic cloud climatologies (Intrieri et al. 1999a), to asses the radiative impact of clouds on surface fluxes (Intrieri et al. 1999b, Persson et al. 1999), and also to compare with aircraft measurements for retrieval validation (Jensen et al. 1999).

Millimeter Cloud Radar
This is a 35-GHz (Ka - band) cloud profiling radar designed by ETL for unattended, long-term cloud monitoring. It is a vertically-pointing, low-peak-power, pulsed, Doppler system with excellent resolution and sensitivity for observing the structure of almost all clouds overhead. It uses a traveling wave tube amplifier and pulse compression techniques, its data system includes a commercial boundary layer wind profiler processor. The radar can cycle through different operating modes which emphasize low or high altitudes and different sensitivities.

Balloon-Borne Sounding System (BBSS)
The Balloon-Borne Sounding System (BBSS) provides in-situ measurements (vertical profiles) of both the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere, and the wind speed and direction.

Rawinsonde
The measurement system is called "GLASS" for GPS-Loran Atmospheric Sounding System. GLASS was designed and installed by the Atmospheric Technology Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Contacts

For more information regarding the LIDAR system, or products in this site, contact Janet Intrieri by sending Janet.Intrieri@noaa.gov

For more information regarding the RADAR system, or products in this site, contact Taneil Uttal by sending Taneil.Uttal@noaa.gov.

For more information regarding the APL rawinsondes, or products in this site, contact Dick Moritz by sending dickm@apl.washington.edu.

For more information regarding the DOE/ARM instruments, or products in this site, contact Knut Stamnes by sending knut@gi.alaska.edu or contact Bernie Zak by sending bdzak@sandia.gov.