EAGER: A Prototype System for Electrical and Meteorological Measurements in Convective Vortices

主要研究者（PI）计划制造和测试原型仪器，以获得描述大气中小尺度对流（即热驱动）涡旋行为的专门测量结果。 对流涡旋的大小不等，从小型的短暂环流（如“沙尘暴”）到更大和更持久的飓风级环流，在热量、动量和示踪物质（如灰尘和其他形式的气溶胶）的垂直传输中发挥重要作用。 PI最近提出了一个关于这些涡旋的广义理论，其中包括不可逆热力学过程的影响（追踪空气的粘性和由此产生的湍流动量损失）和其他能量源/汇。 该理论提供了一个数学表达式，涉及压力和流速，揭示了新的光在他们观察到的强度和基本结构特征，包括他们的倾向，表现出空心（或“平静的眼睛”）类型的结构。 PI将指导全职研究生和实验室技术人员设计，制造和测试普朗特管数据采集系统，该系统能够获得正确测试该理论所需的压力测量值。 该仪器将安装在一个适合远程部署的短塔上，将同时测量静态和动态（停滞产生的）流体压力在所需的分辨率，并且将结合对带电粒子的检测，所述带电粒子又可以与已知在一些灰尘内出现的带状流动结构的存在相关联，这一努力的智力价值来自于对各种尺度上支配旋转大气流的动力学的基本理解的提高。 这一探索性努力的更广泛影响将主要通过支持研究生的教育来实现，但最终可能会扩展到改进对从广阔的沙漠中扬起灰尘（以及相关的气候系统影响）的过程的表示，以详细预测破坏性风暴，如雷暴引发的龙卷风。

The Principal Investigator (PI) plans to fabricate and test a prototype instrument in an effort to obtain specialized measurements describing the behavior of small-scale convective (i.e. thermally-driven) vortices in the atmosphere. Convective vortices range in size from small short-lived gyres (such as "dust devils") to far larger and more persistent hurricane-class circulations, and play an important role in vertical transports of heat, momentum and tracer species such as dust and other forms of aerosol. The PI recently advanced a generalized theory for these vortices that includes the effect of irreversible thermodynamic processes (tracing to air's viscosity and resulting turbulent losses of momentum) and other sources/sinks of energy. This theory provides a mathematical expression relating pressure and flow speed that sheds new light on their observed intensity and basic structural features, including their tendency to exhibit hollow (or "calm eye") type structure. The PI will direct a full-time graduate student and laboratory technician in the design, fabrication and testing a Prandtl-tube data acquisition system capable of obtaining pressure measurements needed to properly test this theory. This instrument, which will be mounted on a short tower suitable for remote deployment, will simultaneously measure both static and dynamic (stagnation-generated) fluid pressures at required resolution, and will incorporate detection of charged particles that can in turn be linked to the presence of banded flow structures known to occur within some dust-filled circulations.The intellectual merit of this effort derives from improved basic understanding of the dynamics governing rotational atmospheric flows on a wide variety of scales. Broader impacts of this exploratory effort will come primarily through support for education of a graduate student, but could ultimately extend to improved representations of processes responsible for lifting of dust from vast expanses of desert (and associated climate system impacts) to detailed predictions of damaging storms such as thunderstorm-spawned tornadoes.