EAGER: Robust, Low-power Strategies for Unattended Micrometeorological Buoy Deployments in Extreme Cold and Freezing Spray

该项目旨在测试/开发低功耗方法，以减轻冰和液态水对海气动量和热通量传感器的性能和数据质量的影响。它利用冷室和风洞设施来开发和测试已成功用于飞机应用的主动除冰策略。该技术将适用于安大略湖越冬浮标的低功率场景。如果成功，这种方法可以在冬季直接测量从湖泊到大气的动量、热量和水分。这些测量对于更好地模拟和预测湖效应雪是必要的，湖效应雪经常影响北美五大湖下风的社区，造成生命损失、财产和基础设施的破坏，以及商业和社会的混乱。稳健、低功耗的策略可以减少传感器和结构上的积冰，除了这项研究应用之外，还将有更广泛的应用。该项目将部分资助纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校和宾夕法尼亚州立大学的研究生，他们将在测试中发挥不可或缺的作用，从而获得宝贵的培训和经验，这是他们研究生教育的一部分。推动该项目的首要科学目标是改进湖泊大气动量、热量和水分通量的参数化，从而更好地预测湖泊效应降雪。在冬季使用涡动相关（EC）技术直接测量通量，对于发展/改进地表通量参数化、检验研究假设和检查模式在极端强迫下的性能是最有用的。迄今为止，在寒冷的冬季条件下，在功率有限的平台上测量湍流和通量存在困难，因此无法收集此类数据。作为在这些条件下发展EC通量测量能力的一步，该项目将采用航空工业的技术，并探索使用短而强的机械振动和/或热脉冲从仪器表面去除冰或水的可行性。这些方法将在模拟冷冻喷雾条件下进行测试。这种除冰方法比简单地加热传感器使其不结冰要节能得多。如果成功，该方法将被部署在具有额外浮力和高扶正力矩的浮标上，以防止上层建筑的其他部分结冰。这些浮标将提供五大湖无冰地区的冬季测量数据。这些技术的成功示范将发表在同行评议的文献中，使其他研究极端环境微气象学的研究人员能够应用这些技术，并在更广泛的范围内，将其应用于减冰至关重要且可用功率有限的地区。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is for the testing/development of low-power methods to mitigate the effects of ice and liquid water on the performance and data quality of air-sea momentum and heat flux sensors. It utilizes cold chambers and wind tunnel facilities to develop and test active deicing strategies that have been successfully used in aircraft applications. The techniques will be adapted and optimized for the low-power scenario of an overwinter buoy on Lake Ontario. If successful, this approach could enable direct measurements of momentum, heat and moisture from the lake into the atmosphere during the winter. Such measurements are needed for better modeling and prediction of lake effect snow, which frequently impact communities downwind of the North American Great Lakes, causing loss of life, destruction of property and infrastructure, and commercial and social disruption. Robust, low-power strategies to mitigate ice accumulation on sensors and structures would also have broader applications beyond this research application. This project will partially fund graduate students at SUNY Albany and Penn State who will play an integral role in the testing, and thereby receive valuable training and experience that is part of their graduate education.The overarching scientific goal motivating this project is to improve parameterizations of lake-atmosphere momentum, heat, and moisture fluxes that will lead to better lake effect snow forecasts. Direct measurements of fluxes using the eddy covariance (EC) technique during the winter would be most useful to develop/improve surface flux parameterizations, test research hypotheses, and examine model performance under extreme forcing. To date, difficulties associated with measuring turbulence and fluxes from power-limited platforms during hard winter conditions have precluded collection of such data. As a step toward developing the capability for EC flux measurements in these conditions, this project will adopt a technique from the aviation industry and explore the feasibility of using short, intense pulses of mechanical vibrations and/or heat to dislodge ice or water from the instrument surfaces. These methods will be tested under simulated freezing spray conditions. This de-icing method is expected to be much more power efficient than simply heating the sensors to keep them ice free. If successful, the method is intended to be deployed on buoys with extra buoyancy and high righting moment to resist ice buildup on other parts of the superstructure. The buoys would provide winter time measurements from the ice-free parts of the Great Lakes. Successful demonstration of these techniques will be published in the peer reviewed literature, enabling application by other researchers focused on micrometeorology in extreme environments, and, more broadly, applications where ice mitigation is critical and available power is limited.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.