{"id":39,"date":"2016-10-13T00:12:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T00:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/?p=39"},"modified":"2016-10-13T00:12:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T00:12:17","slug":"windy-days-are-here-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/2016\/10\/13\/windy-days-are-here-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Windy days are here again\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"No

No matter what time of day, sunrise can make for some beautiful scenes over the tundra…<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The last two\u00a0days the winds have been\u00a0blowing at 20-35 mph. \u00a0The lower end of this range is pretty close to the operational limit of the small aircraft we brought with us, and given it\u2019s very early in\u00a0the campaign and the forecast continues to promise better weather ahead, we decided to spend yesterday and\u00a0today making progress on \u201cto-do\u2019s\u201d that were not accomplished on our arrival day.\u00a0 This includes putting additional planes together, calibrating instruments and generally setting ourselves up for productive flying once the wind allows it.<\/p>\n

\"DataHawks

DataHawks, doing their best “bat” imitation, while waiting for better weather.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Steve

Steve checks on the temperature of the water bath we were using to provide a rough calibration for the infrared sensors carried by the planes.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Carl

Carl does some last minute work to prepare his instrument, the VIPS, for action later this week.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This break in the weather allows for a nice opportunity to provide some details on what we are looking to measure while we\u2019re up here. Generally, we\u2019re interested in improving our understanding of processes that control energy transfer at the Earth\u2019s surface.\u00a0 These processes ultimately dictate the rate at which ice grows or melts, and less directly, the rate at which the atmosphere warms or cools.\u00a0 One of the biggest modulators of surface energy is clouds \u2013 the presence of clouds very much changes the amount of radiative energy making it to the surface.\u00a0 Therefore, one major objective is to get some measurements of processes related to cloud formation and maintenance.\u00a0 To do this, we\u2019ll be flying a few different instruments on the tethered balloon system that ARM operates.\u00a0 This includes a small camera system (the NCAR Video Ice Particle Sampler, or VIPS) that will be taking pictures of ice crystals in these clouds, a turbulence pod developed by Ian Brooks at the University of Leeds in the UK that will make measurements of the turbulent structure of the atmosphere in and below the cloud layer, an aerosol spectrometer (POPS, developed by the NOAA Chemical Sciences Division) and a variety of sensors that measure temperature, humidity, winds and liquid water content in the clouds.\u00a0 When put together this will provide a multi-angled view on the clouds and the environment in which they exist.\u00a0 Additionally, this information will be used in conjunction with the ground-based instrumentation deployed by ARM to advance retrieval techniques, These are the algorithms used to infer information on the properties of clouds, precipitation and other things. \u00a0As a matter of fact, we took advantage of the winds to help Fred Helsel of Sandia install another instrument that will provide critical information in this regard, the Precipitation Imaging Probe (PIP) developed at NASA.<\/p>\n

\"Matt

Matt and Fred prepare portions of the PIP for installation on the AMF-3.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Matt

Matt and Wessley King, one of the AMF-3 operators, installing the rack for the PIP.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In addition to the cloud properties, we\u2019re interested in observing the energy exchange at the surface itself.\u00a0 This exchange takes place in several forms, and one that we\u2019re looking to measure is the extent to which turbulent motions in the atmosphere result in heat transfer between the surface and the atmosphere.\u00a0 Of specific interest is how this process evolves as the surface transitions from one that has open water to one that is frozen. Getting this right in models is critical if we\u2019re going to forecast sea ice and understand how climate is evolving, and the measurements we\u2019re collecting are going to be used for evaluation and development of these models, including the Regional Arctic System Model (RASM), run within our group in NOAA\u2019s Physical Sciences Division for sea ice prediction.\u00a0\u00a0 To get these measurements, we\u2019re going to be flying the DataHawk unmanned aircraft, which was developed at the University of Colorado, in a variety of different ways.<\/p>\n

As with any field campaign, the timing of the campaign can really influence the ultimate quality of the dataset.\u00a0 In general, fall is a time when there is extensive cloud cover over Northern Alaska, so I\u2019m very optimistic that we\u2019ll get good cloud conditions to sample.\u00a0 It is less certain that we\u2019ll be able to observe the open water to ice transition.\u00a0 Historically, this would be a great time to see this, but with a thinning sea ice pack, the \u201cice in\u201d date is getting to be later and later.\u00a0 At the moment, the offshore water still appears to be quite warm, which does not bode well for it freezing over any time soon.\u00a0 However, the contrast between the water and the land surface should still provide opportunities for understanding the spatial variability in this energy exchange.\u00a0 The biggest wildcard continues to be the winds.\u00a0 The forecast has them dying off to more manageable levels by sometime tomorrow\u00a0night \u2013 I hope that\u2019s right, and we\u2019ll be keeping a close eye on the conditions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Steve,

Steve, doing his best “I’m ready to be flying again” pose.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The last two\u00a0days the winds have been\u00a0blowing at 20-35 mph. \u00a0The lower end of this range is pretty close to the operational limit of the small aircraft we brought with us, and given it\u2019s very early in\u00a0the campaign and the forecast continues to promise better weather ahead, we decided to spend yesterday and\u00a0today… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-02 03:06:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/alaska-unmanned-3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}