PECAN: Ground Based Lidar and Micro Wave Radiometer and Radiosonde Profiling of the Thermodynamic and Dynamic Structure of the Nocturnal Boundary

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This award is for participation in the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) field campaign. PECAN will take place in the central United States in the summer of 2015. The focus of the overall project is on overnight thunderstorm complexes that regularly occur in the Great Plains area. A variety of observational systems will be put in place for the field experiment including multiple aircraft, mobile radars, and ground-based systems that can profile the wind and particles in the lower atmosphere. This individual project will provide funding for researchers to provide instrumentation at one of the campaign ground sites. The researchers will focus on measurements that describe the environment prior to the initiation of the thunderstorms. This project will help to increase understanding of these convective systems in order to better predict and warn the public of hazardous weather. The project will also help train the future generation of scientists by involving a student in the research. The steering committee for the PECAN campaign has identified four main research topics to be addressed: 1) Nocturnal convection initiation and early evolution of mesoscale convective clusters; 2) Bore and other wave-like disturbances; 3) Dynamics and microphysics of nocturnal mesoscale convective systems; 4) Prediction of nocturnal convection initiation and evolution. This objective of this project is to provide a quantitative assessment of the evolution of the nighttime boundary layer and entire troposphere with particular attention to its potential for elevated convection. The researchers will coordinate and manage the deployment and data acquisition of highly resolved water vapor mixing ratio, temperature, aerosol structure and wind profiles at one of the Fixed PECAN Integrated Sounding Array (PISA) sites. The specific instrumentation includes a wind lidar, sounding system, ceilometer, and Raman lidar.