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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9

Measurements from mobile surface vehicles during the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE)

Abstract. Between 14 and 20 July 2018, small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) were deployed to the San Luis Valley of Colorado (USA) alongside surface-based remote sensors, in situ sensors, and radiosonde systems as part of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). The measurements collected as part of LAPSE-RATE targeted quantities related to enhancing our understanding of boundary layer structure, cloud and aerosol properties and surface–atmosphere exchange and provide detailed information to support model evaluation and improvement work. Additionally, intensive intercomparison between the different unmanned aircraft platforms was completed. The current paper describes the observations obtained using three different types of surface-based mobile observing vehicles. These included the University of Colorado Mobile UAS Research Collaboratory (MURC), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Severe Storms Laboratory Mobile Mesonet, and two University of Nebraska Combined Mesonet and Tracker (CoMeT) vehicles. Over the 1-week campaign, a total of 143 h of data were collected using this combination of vehicles. The data from these coordinated activities provide detailed perspectives on the spatial variability of atmospheric state parameters (air temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind) throughout the northern half of the San Luis Valley. These datasets have been checked for quality and published to the Zenodo data archive under a specific “community” setup for LAPSE-RATE (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 21 January 2021) and are accessible at no cost by all registered users. The primary dataset DOIs are https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3814765 (CU MURC measurements; de Boer et al., 2020d), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3738175 (NSSL MM measurements; Waugh, 2020), and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3838724 (UNL CoMeT measurements; Houston and Erwin, 2020).

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

University of Colorado and Black Swift Technologies RPAS-based measurements of the lower atmosphere during LAPSE-RATE

Abstract. Between 14 and 20 July 2018, small remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPASs) were deployed to the San Luis Valley of Colorado (USA) together with a variety of surface-based remote and in situ sensors as well as radiosonde systems as part of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE). The observations from LAPSE-RATE were aimed at improving our understanding of boundary layer structure, cloud and aerosol properties, and surface–atmosphere exchange and provide detailed information to support model evaluation and improvement work. The current paper describes the observations obtained using four different types of RPASs deployed by the University of Colorado Boulder and Black Swift Technologies. These included the DataHawk2, the Talon and the TTwistor (University of Colorado), and the S1 (Black Swift Technologies). Together, these aircraft collected over 30 h of data throughout the northern half of the San Luis Valley, sampling altitudes between the surface and 914 m a.g.l. Data from these platforms are publicly available through the Zenodo archive and are co-located with other LAPSE-RATE data as part of the Zenodo LAPSE-RATE community (https://zenodo.org/communities/lapse-rate/, last access: 27 May 2021). The primary DOIs for these datasets are https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3891620 (DataHawk2, de Boer et al., 2020a, e), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4096451 (Talon, de Boer et al., 2020d), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4110626 (TTwistor, de Boer et al., 2020b), and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3861831 (S1, Elston and Stachura, 2020).

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Data collected using small uncrewed aircraft systems during the TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER)

Abstract. The main goal of the TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) project was to further understand the role that regional circulations and aerosol loading play in the convective cloud life cycle across the greater Houston, Texas, area. To accomplish this goal, the United States Department of Energy and research partners collaborated to deploy atmospheric observing systems across the region. Cloud and precipitation radars, radiosondes, and air quality sensors captured atmospheric and cloud characteristics. A dense lower-atmospheric dataset was developed using ground-based remote sensors, a tethersonde, and uncrewed aerial systems (UASs). TRACER-UAS is a subproject that deployed two UAS platforms to gather high-resolution observations in the lower atmosphere between 1 June and 30 September 2022. The University of Oklahoma CopterSonde and the University of Colorado Boulder RAAVEN (Robust Autonomous Aerial Vehicle – Endurant Nimble) were flown at two coastal locations between the Gulf of Mexico and Houston. The University of Colorado Boulder RAAVEN gathered measurements of atmospheric thermodynamic state, winds and turbulence, and aerosol size distribution. Meanwhile, the University of Oklahoma CopterSonde system operated on a regular basis to resolve the vertical structure of the thermodynamic and kinematic state. Together, a complementary dataset of over 200 flight hours across 61 d was generated, and data from each platform proved to be in strong agreement. In this paper, the platforms and respective data collection and processing are described. The dataset described herein provides information on boundary layer evolution, the sea breeze circulation, conditions prior to and nearby deep convection, and the vertical structure and evolution of aerosols. The quality-controlled TRACER-UAS observations from the CopterSonde and RAAVEN can be found at https://doi.org/10.5439/1969004 (Lappin, 2023) and https://doi.org/10.5439/1985470 (de Boer, 2023), respectively.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Nudging allows direct evaluation of coupled climate models with in situ observations: a case study from the MOSAiC expedition

Comparing the output of general circulation models to observations is essential for assessing and improving the quality of models. While numerical weather prediction models are routinely assessed against a large array of observations, comparing climate models and observations usually requires long time series to build robust statistics. Here, we show that by nudging the large-scale atmospheric circulation in coupled climate models, model output can be compared to local observations for individual days. We illustrate this for three climate models during a period in April 2020 when a warm air intrusion reached the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition in the central Arctic. Radiosondes, cloud remote sensing and surface flux observations from the MOSAiC expedition serve as reference observations. The climate models AWI-CM1/ECHAM and AWI-CM3/IFS miss the diurnal cycle of surface temperature in spring, likely because both models assume the snowpack on ice to have a uniform temperature. CAM6, a model that uses three layers to represent snow temperature, represents the diurnal cycle more realistically. During a cold and dry period with pervasive thin mixed-phase clouds, AWI-CM1/ECHAM only produces partial cloud cover and overestimates downwelling shortwave radiation at the surface. AWI-CM3/IFS produces a closed cloud cover but misses cloud liquid water. Our results show that nudging the large-scale circulation to the observed state allows a meaningful comparison of climate model output even to short-term observational campaigns. We suggest that nudging can simplify and accelerate the pathway from observations to climate model improvements and substantially extends the range of observations suitable for model evaluation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Evaluating wind profiles in a numerical weather prediction model with Doppler lidar

We use Doppler lidar wind profiles from six locations around the globe to evaluate the wind profile forecasts in the boundary layer generated by the operational global Integrated Forecast System (IFS) from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The six locations selected cover a variety of surfaces with different characteristics (rural, marine, mountainous urban, and coastal urban). We first validated the Doppler lidar observations at four locations by comparison with co-located radiosonde profiles to ensure that the Doppler lidar observations were of sufficient quality. The two observation types agree well, with the mean absolute error (MAE) in wind speed almost always less than 1 m s –1 . Large deviations in the wind direction were usually only seen for low wind speeds and are due to the wind direction uncertainty increasing rapidly as the wind speed tends to zero. Time–height composites of the wind evaluation with 1 h resolution were generated, and evaluation of the model winds showed that the IFS model performs best over marine and coastal locations, where the mean absolute wind vector error was usually less than 3 m s –1 at all heights within the boundary layer. Larger errors were seen in locations where the surface was more complex, especially in the wind direction. For example, in Granada, which is near a high mountain range, the IFS model failed to capture a commonly occurring mountain breeze, which is highly dependent on the sub-grid-size terrain features that are not resolved by the model. The uncertainty in the wind forecasts increased with forecast lead time, but no increase in the bias was seen. At one location, we conditionally performed the wind evaluation based on the presence or absence of a low-level jet diagnosed from the Doppler lidar observations. The model was able to reproduce the presence of the low-level jet, but the wind speed maximum was about 2 m s –1 lower than observed. This is attributed to the effective vertical resolution of the model being too coarse to create the strong gradients in wind speed observed. Our results show that Doppler lidar is a suitable instrument for evaluating the boundary layer wind profiles in atmospheric models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Variations in boundary layer stability across Antarctica: a comparison between coastal and interior sites

The range of boundary layer stability profiles, from the surface to 500 m a.g.l. (above ground level), present in radiosonde observations from two continental-interior (South Pole Station and Dome Concordia Station) and three coastal (McMurdo Station, Georg von Neumayer Station III, and Syowa Station) Antarctic sites, is examined using the self-organizing maps (SOMs) neural network algorithm. A wide range of potential temperature profiles is revealed, from shallow boundary layers with strong near-surface stability to deeper boundary layers with weaker or near-neutral stability, as well as profiles with weaker near-surface stability and enhanced stability aloft, above the boundary layer. Boundary layer regimes were defined based on the range of profiles revealed by the SOM analysis; 20 boundary layer regimes were identified to account for differences in stability near the surface as well as above the boundary layer. Strong, very strong, or extremely strong stability, with vertical potential temperature gradients of 5 to in excess of 30 K per 100 m, occurred more than 80 % of the time at South Pole and Dome Concordia in the winter. Weaker stability was found in the winter at the coastal sites, with moderate and strong stability (vertical potential temperature gradients of 1.75 to 15 K per 100 m) occurring 70 % to 85 % of the time. Even in the summer, moderate and strong stability is found across all five sites, either immediately near the surface or aloft, just above the boundary layer. While the mean boundary layer height at the continental-interior sites was found to be approximately 50 m, the mean boundary layer height at the coastal sites was deeper, around 110 m. Further, a commonly described two-stability-regime system in the Arctic associated with clear or cloudy conditions was applied to the 20 boundary layer regimes identified in this study to understand if the two-regime behavior is also observed in the Antarctic. It was found that moderate and strong stability occur more often with clear- than cloudy-sky conditions, but weaker stability regimes occur almost equally for clear and cloudy conditions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Operational wind plants increase planetary boundary layer height: an observational study

As wind energy deployment grows, interactions between wind plants and the surrounding environment become more prevalent. The current investigation seeks to understand these interactions by characterizing the impact of wind plants on the planetary boundary layer height (PBLH), utilizing observations from the American WAKE experimeNt (AWAKEN) campaign. Given the ambiguity of the definition of PBLH under stable atmospheric conditions, where the impact of wind plants is expected to be strongest, a comparison of different methods for identifying PBLH is first conducted using data collected by multiple types of instruments. The Heffter method is selected as the thermodynamic method because it generates the most consistent results for the radiosonde and infrared spectrometer. A minimum vertical velocity variance method is used for a turbulence-based definition. Using both of these methods, the values of PBLH measured at spatially distributed sites are compared under a range of atmospheric conditions. Both methods show a clear increase in PBLH downstream of a wind plant for stable conditions. These impacts are strongest when the upstream PBLH is shallow (less than 0.25 km), with the thermodynamic method showing a PBLH increase of 35 %–39 % and the turbulence-based method showing a 143 % increase. At a site 20 km downstream of the wind plant, these effects are no longer observed, suggesting PBLH is not influenced by the wind plant at this distance. The results of this investigation show that wind plants can modify PBLH in their vicinity. As PBLH is a key parameter for numerical models, this insight into wind plant–atmosphere interactions can be used to validate and improve the accuracy of wind energy forecasts.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

sondeparam

The SondeParam VAP will calculate useful radiosonde convective cloud parameters including the convective available potential energy (CAPE), convective inhibition (CIN), LCL, LFC, LNB, and other parameters.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ShupeTurner cloud microphysics

This product is the ShupeTurner cloud microphysics product derived for the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition in the central Arctic. The product includes time-height derivations of the cloud type (phase type) and the condensed water content and characteristic effective particle size for liquid and ice hydrometeor populations. Additionally, it includes the vertical integral of the condensed water content for liquid and ice, i.e., the liquid water path and ice water path. These are derived using a combination of sensors, including: cloud radar, depolarization lidar, microwave radiometer, ceilometer, and radiosondes. During MOSAiC, these sensors were installed and operated onboard the Polarstern icebreaker while within the Arctic sea ice. Most data were obtained while Polarstern was moored to the MOSAiC sea ice floe, passively drifting through the Arctic. However, the data from 16 May 2020 - 17 June 2020 and 31 July 2020 - 21 August 2020 were obtained while Polarstern was underway transiting through the sea ice during relocations of the expedition. General details of the retrieval algorithm, its application, and uncertainties are provided in Shupe et al. (2015), with the cloud classification being described in more detail in Shupe (2007). General details about the MOSAiC expedition including instruments, locations, and meteorological context is provided in Shupe et al. (2022).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

microbase.c1

MICROBASE is a baseline retrieval of cloud microphysical properties. It uses a combination of observations from the cloud radar, ceilometer, micropulse lidar, microwave radiometer, and balloon-borne radiosonde soundings in order to produce instantaneous vertical profiles of cloud liquid water content (LWC), cloud ice water content (IWC), liquid cloud particle effective radius (LIQRE), and ice cloud particle effective radius (ICERE). Uncertainites are also produced by the VAP. The inputs are by the following VAPs: Active Remote Sensing of Clouds (ARSCL) Merged Sounding (MERGESONDE) Microwave Radiometer Retrievals (MWRRET) The output are daily files.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

TRACER-Tethersonde Ozone data

TRACER-Tethersonde, a sub-campaign of TRACER, took place during the TRACER June-September 2022 intensive operating period (IOP) at the S3 Ancillary site (29.33°N, 95.74°W) near Guy, TX. The Tethered Balloon System (TBS) operated during the first two weeks of each month during the TRACER IOP, making multiple (~4) up and down vertical profiles each day that could reach as high as ~1 km. TRACER-Tethersonde included an En-Sci electrochemical cell (ECC) ozonesonde on the TBS. The ozonesonde was connected to an iMet-4RSB radiosonde, and the overall data collected included ozone, relative humidity, temperature, and altitude.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Thermodynamic Cloud Phase Classifications Using Machine Learning at NSA and ANX

Vertically resolved thermodynamic cloud phase classifications are essential for studies of atmospheric cloud and precipitation processes. The Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) THERMOCLDPHASE Value-Added Product (VAP) uses a multi-sensor approach to classify thermodynamic cloud phase by combining lidar backscatter and depolarization, radar reflectivity, Doppler velocity, spectral width, microwave radiometer-derived liquid water path, and radiosonde temperature measurements. The measured voxels are classified as ice, snow, mixed-phase, liquid (cloud water), drizzle, rain, and liq_driz (liquid+drizzle). We use this product as the ground truth to train three machine learning (ML) models to predict the thermodynamic cloud phase from multi-sensor remote sensing measurements taken at the ARM North Slope of Alaska (NSA) observatory: a random forest (RF), a multilayer perceptron (MLP), and a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a U-Net architecture. Evaluations against the outputs of the THERMOCLDPHASE VAP with one year of data show that the CNN outperforms the other two models, achieving the highest test accuracy, F1-score, and mean Intersection over Union (IOU). Analysis of ML confidence scores shows ice, rain, and snow have higher confidence scores, followed by liquid, while mixed, drizzle, and liq_driz have lower scores. Feature importance analysis reveals that the mean Doppler velocity and vertically resolved temperature are the most influential datastreams for ML thermodynamic cloud phase predictions. The ML models’ generalization capacity is further evaluated by applying them at another Arctic ARM site in Norway using data taken during the ARM Cold-Air Outbreaks in the Marine Boundary Layer Experiment (COMBLE) field campaign. Finally, we evaluate the ML models’ response to simulated instrument outages and signal degradation.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ARM SGP PBLH and MLH datasets from Raman lidar and Doppler lidar

The planetary boundary layer (PBL) plays a critical role in the atmosphere by transferring heat, moisture, and momentum. The warm PBL has a distinct diurnal cycle including the daytime convective mixing layer (ML) and nighttime residual layer developments. Thus, simultaneous determinations of PBL height (PBLH) and ML height (MLH) are necessary for studying PBL characterization and processes. Here, new approaches are developed to provide reliable PBLH and MLH estimates to characterize warm PBL evolution. The approaches use Raman lidar (RL) water vapor mixing ratio (WVMR) and Doppler lidar (DL) vertical velocity measurements at the Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory, which was established by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility. Compared to widely used lidar aerosol measurements for PBLH, WVMR is a better tracer for PBL vertical mixing. For PBLH, the approach classifies PBL water vapor structures into a few general patterns, then uses a slope method and dynamic threshold method to determine PBLH. For MLH, wavelet analysis is used to reconstruct 2D variance from DL vertical wind velocity measurements according to the turbulence eddy size to minimize the impacts of gravity wave and eddy size on variance calculations; then, a dynamic threshold method is used to determine MLH. Remotely-sensed PBLHs and MLHs are compared with radiosonde measurements based on the Richardson number method. Good agreements between them confirm that the proposed new algorithms are reliable for PBLH and MLH characterization. The algorithms are applied to warm-season RL and ML measurements at the SGP site for five years to study warm-season PBL structure and processes. The weekly composited diurnal evolutions of PBLHs and MLHs in a warm climate were provided to illustrate diurnal and seasonal PBL evolutions. This reliable data set of PBLH and MLH values will be valuable for studying PBL processes, model evolution, and PBL parameterization improvements. The MLH dataset includes the MLH in values of km above ground level. The PBLH dataset includes the PBLH in values of km above ground level, along with a flag ("situation_PBLH") to determine the state of the PBL (1 = Cloudy Condition, 2 = Stable Layer, 3 = Multi-layer WVMR structure, 4 = Well-Mixed PBL, 5 = A de-coupled layer, 6 = Other).

mixing layer height↗

NWB Sensors Infrared Cloud Imager Data Products from SGP

NWB Sensors is a company which has developed a commercially available Infrared Cloud Imager (ICI). For more information, consult the company's webpage, https://www.nwbsensors.com/infrared-cloud-imager. To validate the radiometric accuracy of the ICI, NWB Sensors deployed it to the ARM SGP User Facility in 2023. The primary motivation of this deployment was to perform an intercomparison between the ICI and the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI). The AERI spectral radiance data product can be integrated across the response function of the ICI and directly compared to the zenith radiance observed by the ICI. In addition, the ICI uses proprietary models of the downwelling clear-sky radiance in its cloud processing algorithms. They are based on surface meteorology and precipitable water vapor (PWV). These models were validated by comparing their predicted radiances to those derived from radiative transfer models of the ARM radiosondes. Finally, PWV observations derived from the ICI's onboard GNSS-based PWV retrieval system were compared against those from the microwave radiometer. This dataset contains the ICI radiance and cloud data products.

Atmosphere↗

CRGTBSO3 TBS Ozone Data

The Tethered Balloon System (TBS) operated for two weeks during a summer IOP of the CoURAGE campaign. This dataset includes data collected from an En-Sci electrochemical cell (ECC) ozonesonde on the TBS. The ozonesonde was connected to an iMet-4RSB radiosonde, and the overall data collected included ozone, relative humidity, temperature, and altitude. The data from the iMet is the same as that found in the TBSMERGED data product. The TBS also had another instrument (iMet XQ2) that collected meteorological data, which may have more accurate relative humidity (RH) data. This ozonesonde data set is intended to complement the TBSMERGED data product, the CRGTBSO3 surface ozone measurements, and the CoURAGE SWARM ozone lidar (TOLNet) measurements from other locations.

Atmospheric relative humidity↗

Multihour Stratospheric Flights with the Heliotrope Solar Hot-Air Balloon

Standard meteorological balloons can deliver small scientific payloads to the stratosphere for a few tens of minutes, but achieving multihour level flight in this region is more difficult. We have developed a solar-powered hot-air balloon named the heliotrope that can maintain a nearly constant altitude in the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere as long as the sun is above the horizon. It can accommodate scientific payloads ranging from hundreds of grams to several kilograms. The balloon can achieve float altitudes exceeding 24 km and fly for days in the Arctic summer, although sunset provides a convenient flight termination mechanism at lower latitudes. Two people can build an envelope in about 3.5 h, and the materials cost about $30. The low cost and simplicity of the heliotrope enables a class of missions that is generally out of reach of institutions lacking specialized balloon expertise. Here, we discuss the design history, construction techniques, trajectory characteristics, and flight prediction of the heliotrope balloon. We conclude with a discussion of the physics of solar hot-air balloon flight.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Interpolated Sounding and Gridded Sounding Value-Added Products

Standard Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility sounding files provide atmospheric state data in one dimension of increasing time and height per sonde launch. Many applications require a quick estimate of the atmospheric state at higher time resolution. The INTERPOLATEDSONDE (i.e., Interpolated Sounding) Value-Added Product (VAP) transforms sounding data into continuous daily files on a fixed time-height grid, at 1-minute time resolution, on 332 levels, from the surface up to a limit of approximately 40 km. The grid extends that high so the full height of soundings can be captured; however, most soundings terminate at an altitude between 25 and 30 km, above which no data is provided. Between soundings, the VAP linearly interpolates atmospheric state variables in time for each height level. In addition, INTERPOLATEDSONDE provides relative humidity scaled to microwave radiometer (MWR) observations.The INTERPOLATEDSONDE VAP, a continuous time-height grid of relative humidity-corrected sounding data, is intended to provide input to higher-order products, such as the Merged Soundings (MERGESONDE; Troyan 2012) VAP, which extends INTERPOLATEDSONDE by incorporating model data. The INTERPOLATEDSONDE VAP also is used to correct gaseous attenuation of radar reflectivity in products such as the KAZRCOR VAP.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

ARM Trajectories Data Set Value-Added Product Report

The U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s ARM Trajectories Data Set (ARMTRAJ) Value-Added Product (VAP) provides trajectory data sets initialized at ARM deployment coordinates and configured using ARM data sets. The six trajectory data sets support aerosol, cloud, planetary boundary layer, and related research (aerosol-cloud interactions, etc.), as well as studies using ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) and tethered balloon system (TBS) measurements. Trajectory calculations use the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model informed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) fifth-generation atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5) data set at its highest spatial resolution (~31 km). HYSPLIT also runs at multiple initial starting locations surrounding ARM deployments (in latitude/longitude and/or vertical coordinates), facilitating an ensemble for each sample in the data sets. The ensemble mean and variability reported in ARMTRAJ improve the fidelity and provide uncertainty estimates of trajectory coordinates, thermodynamic properties, and other output fields.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗