Executive Summary

DRAFT

For the past 35 years, ATD has served the atmospheric research community by providing state-of-the-art atmospheric observing systems, as well as technical and data support services for field projects. In addition to that mission, in FY 04, ATD has contributed in a number of NCAR Strategic Initiatives, including the Biogeosciences Initiative and Water Cycle Across Scales, in a way that forges a path towards an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to understanding and solving some of the most pressing weather and atmospheric challenges facing us today.

FY04 has also been a time of excitement for ATD as the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research (HIAPER) underwent final preparations and modifications to ‘take to the skies’ in 2005. ATD's Raman-Shifted Eye-save Aerosol Lidar (REAL) team carried out the system's first field demonstration at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a prototype of the Adaptive Sensor Array (ASA) was deployed in support of the Carbon in the Mountains Experiment (CME), which is part of the Biogeosciences Initiative. ATD also participated in 12 Field Projects throughout North America utilizing 12 of our facilities as well as the C-130.

Cross-Cutting Interdisciplinary Programs

Biogeosciences Initiative

The overarching objective of NCAR’s Biogeosciences Initiative is to incorporate relevant aspects of the biological sciences into geophysics and atmospheric research. In FY04, ATD has contributed in a number of ways to the objectives outlined in the Initiative, which is a 5-year NSF-funded collaborative project involving the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, University of Miami as well as NCAR’s ATD, Atmospheric Chemistry Division (ACD) and MMM.

In FY04, ATD participated in the Carbon in the Mountains Experiment (CME), conducted at the Niwot Ridge Research Site, ATD deployed instrumentation to investigate the local forest CO2 exchange. These observations will be used to resolve the atmospheric transport of CO2 in order to accurately measure the net ecosystem carbon exchange, and as input to a regional-scale data-assimilation model to improve our understanding of the processes controlling carbon cycling by mountain forests.

ATD developed an autonomous, inexpensive, and robust CO2 analyzer [AIRCOA]. RAF’s Britt Stephens constructed 4 AIRCOA units after our initial design testing and deployed three of these in the field during the CME campaign. Diagnostics and Results. A key component in the robustness of these analyzers is near real-time data processing with extensive automated diagnostic tests to verify normal operation, with new results available from a web interface every day.

ATD conducted the first Airborne Carbon in the Mountains Experiment (ACME I) in May and July of this year to explore methods for constraining regional-scale CO2 fluxes over complex terrain and to collect measurements useful for devising and testing strategies for long-term monitoring of these fluxes.

In an international collaboration, ATD worked with Colorado State University, NOAA CMDL, LSCE (France), University of. Heidelberg (Germany), Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Germany), Tohoku University (Japan), NIES (Japan), and CSIRO (Australia) to complete a synthesis of vertical profile CO2 data from 20 sites around the world to define the vertical distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere. RAF’s Britt Stephens presented an invited seminar on this project at NOAA CMDL and a publication based on this work is in preparation.

Analytical Photonics & Optoelectronics Laboratory (APOL) (top)

APOL group has had a busy year supporting both NCAR Biogeoscience Initiative as well as ATD’s mission of advancing observing technology. A few of the activities include 1) continued development of a high precision CO2 isotopic ratio instrument based upon difference frequency generation (DFG); 2) continued development of a rugged, light-weight, high performance DFG instrument for airborne measurements of formaldehyde (CH2O); 3) continued improvements (both hardware and software) to a liquid-nitrogen cooled lead-salt tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer (TDLAS) for airborne measurements of CH2O; 4) participation in the 2004 INTEX-NA study using the TDLAS instrument for airborne measurements of CH2O; and 5) initiation of a preliminary first look at the data to identify unique photochemical events.

Water Cycle Across Scales

The NCAR Water Cycle Across Scales initiative has as its primary goal to understand how water vapor, precipitation, and land-surface hydrology interact across scales to define the hydrological cycle, and to use this information to improve both large and small scale weather prediction and climate models. ATD continued its collaborative efforts with RAP in 2004 with a combined approach of scientific research and development addressed the following issues:

IHOP diurnal cycle studies (in collaboration with Dave Parsons, Jim Hack, Aiguo Dai and Kevin Trenberth)

The goal of this work was to prepare an hourly, gridded IHOP database to study the diurnal variations of different processes, to compare different datasets and for modelers to use it to validate performances of their models in simulating the diurnal cycle. ATD began with 3-hourly radiosonde data at 5 ARM sites for 21 days, then studied diurnal cycle of precipitation by doing and comparison of hourly, NCEP/CPC gridded multi-sensor and NWS ABRFC stage III precipitation.

Study diurnal variations of water vapor using global GPS data (collaborating with Aiguo Dai, Stick Ware and Teresa Van Hove)

This Opportunity Fund project sought to develop an analysis technique to derive and continuously update a near real-time, global, 2-hourly data set of atmospheric precipitable water (PW) using ground-based Global GPS measurements of the zenith path delay (ZPD).

Community Observing Systems (top)

HIAPER

In FY04, modifications to the GV were completed by Gulfstream and Lockheed. These modifications included the installation of three under wing hard points on each wing, three 20.5-inch diameter view ports (two up-looking and one down-looking), several fuselage hard points and aperture plates, cabin attachment points (seat rails), and research power and signal wiring. High pressure testing of the modified fuselage was successfully conducted in September and preparations were made for ferrying of the aircraft from Greenville, SC to Savannah, GA for interior and exterior completion at the Savannah Air Center. The figure to the left shows the newly-modified GV receiving final placement of the NSF and NCAR logo templates on the fuselage.

Over the past year, the various HIAPER infrastructure subgroups made significant progress toward the development of critical research systems for the aircraft. The data acquisition system development group – headed by Mike Spowart and Dick Friesen of the HPO – has led the effort to develop a next generation data system that is faster, smaller, lighter, and consumes less power than the current NSF/NCAR C-130 system. The new GV data system is built around a PC-104 (ISA bus) architecture and will continue to provide all of the standard digital interfaces supported by the C-130 system. Older, non-standard digital interfaces (e.g., the PMS probe 2D interface) will be discontinued and replaced by a new USB interface. Construction of the data sampling modules (DSMs) to be used to acquire data from instrumentation mounted on the aircraft was completed in FY04, as was environmental testing of the DSM prototype. Chris Webster and Mike Daniels continued to oversee the effort to develop new data visualization and access software for the GV. Software engineers from throughout ATD contributed time and expertise to this software development effort, resulting in the creation of several prototype display packages by the conclusion of FY04.

Other HIAPER infrastructure preparation efforts undertaken during FY04 included the award of subcontracts for installation of the intercommunication system (ICS) and SATCOM systems and an Airborne Flight Information System (AFIS) on the GV. The ICS installation will be performed by Garrett Aviation and Savannah Air Center personnel during the aircraft interior and exterior completion time period, and Atlas Telecom will undertake installation of the SATCOM systems and the AFIS following the delivery of the GV to UCAR/NCAR.

In July, two of the ATD pilots – Henry Boynton and Lowell Genzlinger – completed an intensive flight simulator training course in Savannah, GA to receive their credentials to pilot the GV. Additionally, a number of ATD personnel traveled to July during this same month to participate in an “all hands” training program for the aircraft. This latter series of classes provided the participants with the opportunity to learn about emergency and safety procedures for the aircraft and to take part in a drill involving the evacuation of the smoke-filled cabin of a life-size GV cabin model into water. ATD maintenance team members Bob Beasley, Brent Kidd, and Jim Nolan began the GV maintenance training program in September and will complete the course in early October.

Raman-shifted Eye-safe Aerosol Lidar (REAL)

FY04 saw exceptional advances for REAL. The ATD lidar team migrated the laboratory prototype to a seatainer, designed & fabricated a beam-steering-unit to enable rapid scanning, and carried out the system's first field demonstration at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The DARPA sponsors were sufficiently impressed with the performance of REAL that they have partnered with NCAR to contract a large commercial firm (ITT Industries) to fabricate a continuously operating and unattended REAL for permanent operation at the Pentagon. UCAR has filed patent applications on REAL and some of its components and hopes to license the technology for commercialization.

Adaptive Sensor Array (ASA)

Progress on ASA (formerly ISA) continued this year with the deployment of a prototype system. CME04 investigators for the Biogeosciences Initiative requested over 50 temperature soil probes to be deployed in an extensive spatial array. This provided the opportunity to design a prototype of the lowest level of the ASA system, the microscale array. A single prototype unit, referred to as a mote, included 6 temperature probes, sufficient data processing capability to provide calibrated data, an RF communication link, and a small solar-charged battery for power. Each mote was in communication with the new data system and had built-in command control capability to permit critical operating parameters to be adjusted in real-time. All temperature probes were individually calibrated to achieve accuracies better than 0.10 C. The use of stand-alone power sources and RF data communication allowed extensive site selection flexibility. A total of 12 motes supporting 72 temperature probes were deployed. Future plans are to expand the design to allow other ISFF sensors to be fully autonomous and networkable using wireless communication techniques incorporating dynamic routing algorithms. Additional upgrades to the new data system are planned to permit independent adaptation of sampling and response in addition to manual control.

Community Service (top)

ATD exemplifies NCAR’s community service function. ATD’s activities advance the community’s observational capabilities through the deployment of existing facilities and the development, sometimes over many years, of new instrumentation and platforms. Two thirds of all ATD support activities serve university users and most involve users from several universities. Many university and NCAR scientists regard ATD’s capabilities and services as the primary justification for a national center. In FY04, ATD participated in 12 Field Projects throughout North America utilizing 12 of our facilities as well as the C-130. For more information on our Field Projects, visit our ATD Accomplishments Page.

ATD plays a strong role in traditional graduate student education by offering opportunities for participation in field projects as mission coordinators, flight scientists, daily operations managers, etc., and their use of ATD data sets in their research and Theses. The successful NSF Biocomplexity proposal for an isotope-resolving CO2 instrument, led by ATD, had an explicit and well-reviewed education component developed in partnership with UCAR E&O.

As in the previous year, the APOL group worked in close collaboration with NCAR’s Education and Outreach Program to host two teachers and students from local area high schools to help with all phases of this project. This link not only further describes the full project but also shows one important aspect of the teacher and student involvement: organization and dissemination of the material to the broader public.

Executive Summary Select From: Cross-Cutting Interdisciplinary Programs Community Observing Systems Community Service