CASES 1997
This experiment was from 22 April to 21 May, 1997.
and was the first intensive program to use the new CASES facility. This
facility consists of several types of instruments being deployed in
the watershed of the Walnut River in SE Kansas. This watershed was
chosen because it is small enough to instrument well enough to
understand the total water budget, and its geology is such that there
is little underground transfer of water to adjacent watersheds. However,
the Walnut watershed is large enough (roughly 60km by 90km) to encompass
mesoscale meteological phenomena.
Permanent (lifetime of 15 years) instruments for the CASES facility
are being provided by the U. S. Department of Energy, mostly from
the Argonne Research Laboratory. For CASES97, several NCAR platforms
were used to supplement the Argonne instrumentation. These are:
- 3 CLASS stations (located near 915 MHz profilers installed by
DOE) to provide thermodynamic profiles at the boundary of the watershed.
Each station also has a GPS receiver to be used to obtain continuous
column-integrated water vapor.
- 8 surface stations (6 Flux-PAM and 2 ASTER sites) to characterize
the fluxes of sensible and latent heat, momentum, net radiation, and
surface heat over different regions and surface characteristics over
the watershed. One site also measures carbon dioxide and ozone fluxes,
along with all radiation components.
- S-Pol to provide precipitation amounts over the entire watershed.
- 3 Bi-net receivers to obtain enhanced doppler wind coverage (in
addition to the WSR88D at Wichita)
In addition, the University of Wyoming King-Air and a newly-instrumented
Twin Otter from NOAA made turbulent flux measurements over the
watershed during intensive operation periods. NOAA/ATDD also had
a micrometeorological site with ozone flux measurements. The University
of Colorado has a surface energy balance tower site. NOAA/ERL installed
a ceilometer and all-sky camera near one of the ASTER sites.
Steven Oncley<oncley@ucar.edu>
Last modified: Wed Apr 16 22:00:00 1997