Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 5

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Winter has set its sights upon us, just in time to make the holidays bright. Remembering the joy winter brought us when we were children might help us cope with the hazards and inconvenience of the season, but we can't avoid the coping. The basic mechanisms that support summer storms also occur in winter storms. These mechanisms include low-pressure centers, warm fronts, and cold fronts. As winter approaches, the northern branch of the jet stream dips to the south, bringing cold polar air into the Midwest and Southern Great Plains states. Counterclockwise rotation around a low-pressure center allows relatively warm, moist air from the south to flow northward on the eastern side of the low. Cold air from the north is drawn southward, behind the low-pressure center. Sufficiently cold air and abundant moisture are two ingredients necessary to fuel a winter storm system. The intensity of a storm depends on the strength and position of the jet stream relative to the low-pressure center, as well as horizontal temperature gradients and upper-air disturbances. The most frequent origin for snowstorms that affect the Southern Great Plains states is the lee of the Rocky Mountains. Low-pressure systems develop in this area and move eastward or northeastward, encountering and picking up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Such storms contribute to average annual snowfall levels over the ARM Program sites ranging from 5-15 inches in Oklahoma to 15-30 inches in Kansas.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 2000 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5

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Book Description
Winter has set its sights upon us, just in time to make the holidays bright. Remembering the joy winter brought us when we were children might help us cope with the hazards and inconvenience of the season, but we can't avoid the coping. The basic mechanisms that support summer storms also occur in winter storms. These mechanisms include low-pressure centers, warm fronts, and cold fronts. As winter approaches, the northern branch of the jet stream dips to the south, bringing cold polar air into the Midwest and Southern Great Plains states. Counterclockwise rotation around a low-pressure center allows relatively warm, moist air from the south to flow northward on the eastern side of the low. Cold air from the north is drawn southward, behind the low-pressure center. Sufficiently cold air and abundant moisture are two ingredients necessary to fuel a winter storm system. The intensity of a storm depends on the strength and position of the jet stream relative to the low-pressure center, as well as horizontal temperature gradients and upper-air disturbances. The most frequent origin for snowstorms that affect the Southern Great Plains states is the lee of the Rocky Mountains. Low-pressure systems develop in this area and move eastward or northeastward, encountering and picking up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Such storms contribute to average annual snowfall levels over the ARM Program sites ranging from 5-15 inches in Oklahoma to 15-30 inches in Kansas.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 1999

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, December 1999 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 4

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This issue continues the discussion on lightning begun with the last issue. It reviews briefly what lightning is, then discusses protecting buildings and structures, personal protection, and protecting ARM structures. Five sources for more information are listed.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, April 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, April 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 5

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This issue of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM Program) monthly newsletter is about the ARM Program goal to improve scientific understanding of the interactions of sunlight (solar radiation) with the atmosphere, then incorporate this understanding into computer models of climate change. To model climate accurately all around the globe, a variety of data must be collected from many locations on Earth. For its Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) sites, ARM chose locations in the US Southern Great Plains, the North Slope of Alaska, and the Tropical Western Pacific Ocean to represent different climate types around the world. In this newsletter they consider the North Slope of Alaska site, with locations at Barrow and Atqasuk, Alaska.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, February 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, February 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 2

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This issue of the ARM facilities newsletter discusses the Spring 2000 cloud intensive observation period, March 1--21, 2000. The month of March brings researchers to the SGP CART site to participate in the Spring 2000 Cloud IOP. The purpose is to gather data about the three-dimensional structure and distribution of clouds over the CART site. This effort will help to produce a more accurate representation of the clouds and their influence on weather and climate for use in computer modeling.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, July 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, July 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 2

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For improved safety in and around the ARM SGP CART site, the ARM Program recently purchased and installed an aircraft detection radar system at the central facility near Lamont, Oklahoma. The new system will enhance safety measures already in place at the central facility. The SGP CART site, especially the central facility, houses several instruments employing laser technology. These instruments are designed to be eye-safe and are not a hazard to personnel at the site or pilots of low-flying aircraft over the site. However, some of the specialized equipment brought to the central facility by visiting scientists during scheduled intensive observation periods (IOPs) might use higher-power laser beams that point skyward to make measurements of clouds or aerosols in the atmosphere. If these beams were to strike the eye of a person in an aircraft flying above the instrument, damage to the person's eyesight could result. During IOPs, CART site personnel have obtained Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to temporarily close the airspace directly over the central facility and keep aircraft from flying into the path of the instrument's laser beam. Information about the blocked airspace is easily transmitted to commercial aircraft, but that does not guarantee that the airspace remains completely plane-free. For this reason, during IOPs in which non-eye-safe lasers were in use in the past, ARM technicians watched for low-flying aircraft in and around the airspace over the central facility. If the technicians spotted such an aircraft, they would manually trigger a safety shutter to block the laser beam's path skyward until the plane had cleared the area.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, March 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, March 2000 PDF Author:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5

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The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM Program) is sending a copy of the ARM Video, an education overview of their program. In the video you will see and hear ARM scientists describe the importance of studying climate and climate change. It also contains a tour of some ARM sites and a look at state-of-the-art meteorological instrumentation, along with background information about the radiation budget and the complexity of climate modeling. The video was produced by the US Department of Energy.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, August 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, August 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 2

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The primary objective of this USDA program is to provide information to the agricultural community about the geographic and temporal climatology of UV-B radiation. Scientists also use the data to determine changes in stratospheric ozone levels, cloud cover, and aerosols as they pertain to UV-B radiation and to improve the understanding of factors that control transmission of UV-B radiation. Advances have been made in areas of agriculture, human health effects, ecosystem studies, and atmospheric science. ARM Program personnel are excited about being a part of such a worthwhile effort.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, January 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, January 2000 PDF Author:
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Languages : en
Pages : 3

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The subject of this newsletter is the ARM unmanned aerospace vehicle program. The ARM Program's focus is on climate research, specifically research related to solar radiation and its interaction with clouds. The SGP CART site contains highly sophisticated surface instrumentation, but even these instruments cannot gather some crucial climate data from high in the atmosphere. The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense joined together to use a high-tech, high-altitude, long-endurance class of unmanned aircraft known as the unmanned aerospace vehicle (UAV). A UAV is a small, lightweight airplane that is controlled remotely from the ground. A pilot sits in a ground-based cockpit and flies the aircraft as if he were actually on board. The UAV can also fly completely on its own through the use of preprogrammed computer flight routines. The ARM UAV is fitted with payload instruments developed to make highly accurate measurements of atmospheric flux, radiance, and clouds. Using a UAV is beneficial to climate research in many ways. The UAV puts the instrumentation within the environment being studied and gives scientists direct measurements, in contrast to indirect measurements from satellites orbiting high above Earth. The data collected by UAVs can be used to verify and calibrate measurements and calculated values from satellites, therefore making satellite data more useful and valuable to researchers.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, May 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, May 2000 PDF Author:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 3

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This month the authors will visit an ARM CART site with a pleasant climate: the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) CART site, along the equator in the western Pacific Ocean. The TWP locale lies between 10 degrees North latitude and 10 degrees South latitude and extends from Indonesia east-ward beyond the international date line. This area was selected because it is in and around the Pacific warm pool, the area of warm sea-surface temperatures that determine El Nino/La Nina episodes. The warm pool also adds heat and moisture to the atmosphere and thus fuels cloud formation. Understanding the way tropical clouds and water vapor affect the solar radiation budget is a focus of the ARM Program. The two current island-based CART sites in the TWP are in Manus Province in Papua New Guinea and on Nauru Island.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, October 2000

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Facilities Newsletter, October 2000 PDF Author:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 2

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Energy Balance Bowen Ratio System--Estimates of surface energy fluxes are a primary product of the data collection systems at the ARM SGP CART site. Surface fluxes tell researchers a great deal about the effects of interactions between the sun's energy and Earth. Surface fluxes of latent and sensible heat can be estimated by measuring temperature and relative humidity gradients across a vertical distance. Sensible heat is what we feel coming from a warm sidewalk or a metal car door; it can be measured with a thermometer. Latent heat, on the other hand, is released or absorbed during transformations such as the freezing of water into ice or the evaporation of morning dew from a lawn. Such a transformation is referred to as a ''phase change, '' the conversion of a substance among its solid, liquid, and vapor phases. Phase change is an important aspect of our climate. Earth's water cycle abounds with phase changes: rain falls and evaporates, changing from liquid to vapor; the water vapor in the air condenses to form clouds, changing from a gas into a liquid cloud droplet, and eventually falls to Earth's surface as rain or snow; snow falls and melts to liquid or sublimes directly to water vapor. This cyclic process has no end. Surface vegetation and land use play extremely important roles in surface energy fluxes. Plants absorb and reflect solar radiation and also take up water and expel water vapor. The type of plant material, its stage of growth, and its color determine whether and to what extent the surface and air can couple and exchange energy.