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“Where's the Water Vapor?” | |||
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This massive field experiment takes place in Oklahoma and the surrounding Plains states from May 13 through June 25. IHOP is planned to better measure humidity, rainfall and overall moisture in the air and how it all changes.
Scientists from
agencies and universities in the U.S., Canada and Europe are studying the
weather in the Southern Great Plains states of Kansas, Oklahoma, eastern
Colorado and the Texas panhandle. The region was chosen because instruments
and other facilities are already in place, but especially because moisture
in the air over the Plains varies widely and spawns many storms.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research, the lead organization,
hopes “that the IHOP-2002 measurements will ultimately help us in
understanding when, where and how storms form and will allow us to better
predict actual rainfall amounts associated with these storms.”
Like other atmospheric scientists, SSEC researchers support many field
experiments, to test instruments and to collect data that will lead to
better instruments, better atmospheric computer models and, in the long
run, better weather forecasts.
SSEC has taken its AERIBAGO, a Winnebago converted to carry instruments,
to the Oklahoma panhandle. Inside the AERIBAGO is the Atmospheric Emitted
Radiance Interferometer (AERI for short), which profiles the atmosphere
above it in high detail, much as a weather balloon (radiosonde) does,
but from one station. While weather balloons provide highly reliable data,
they must be constantly replenished, and can be difficult to recycle.
The AERI stays in one place.
A small group of AERIs currently is in place in Oklahoma as part of
the Department of Energy’s long-term Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
Program. Along with other instruments at the site, they will provide their
input to IHOP, as will a whole fleet of instruments and scientists from
U.S. agencies and other universities.
From Oklahoma City, SSEC will fly its Scanning-High resolution Interferometer
Sounder on NASA’s DC-8 from Dryden Research Center. SSEC also supports
NASA’s NPOESS [next polar orbiting satellite] Atmospheric Sounder
Testbed-Interferometer on the Proteus high-altitude research aircraft.
The NAST-I is
developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, with William
L. Smith, former CIMSS director as its principal investigator.
SSEC is also providing innovative high-resolution satellite products
(from GOES and MODIS data received at the center) as well as numerical
weather prediction support. Well suited to regional forecasts is the Atmospheric
Land EXchange Inversion (ALEXI) model which combines satellite and other
data about the energy the earth receives from the sun and radiates out
to space. ALEXI model development is funded by the National Science Foundation
with investigators at the Pennsylvania State University.
New products derived from GOES satellite data are being tested over
the IHOP domain. This higher resolution imagery, called Single Field-Of-View,
provides more detail than the traditional product. These and other displays
for the most recent six hours are specifically focused over the Oklahoma,
Kansas and Texas Panhandle region for both forecasting assistance as well
as product assessment. CIMSS and NOAA researchers working with them hope
that increased exposure to displays of derived product imagery at its
full resolution, purposefully enlarged over this IHOP area, will encourage
wider evaluation and acknowledgment of the value-added benefits as well
as the deficiencies of current GOES Sounder data.
Examples and detailed descriptions of products made from satellite data
can be found at the CIMSS IHOP Web site.
Contacts: |
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Direct comments, suggestions and inquiries to SSEC's Public Information Officer. For past features
and columns, see SSEC’s News
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