Campaign : Colorado: The Storm Peak Lab Cloud Property Validation Experiment (STORMVEX)
2010.11.01 - 2011.03.31
Lead Scientist : Gerald Mace
Description
The core goals of the ARM Climate Research Facility include improving the representation of clouds in global models. To accomplish this goal, ARM has invested considerably in creating long-term data sets from suites of ground-based remote sensors placed at climatically important locations around the world. However, the ability to covert the remote sensing measurements to cloud properties has been hampered by a critical shortage of correlative data that can be used for validation and development of new algorithms. Such correlative data sets are normally created by episodic and expensive aircraft measurements. The field deployment of the second ARM mobile facility has the potential to create a correlative data set equivalent to between 200 and 300 aircraft flights in liquid and mixed phase clouds. This will be achieved by placing the AMF2 in close proximity to an elevated platform that will be heavily instrumented with aerosol, cloud and precipitation sensors.
The Storm Peak Lab (SPL), located east of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, is a well established cloud and aerosol research facility operated by the Desert Research Institute. SPL is located at 3210m above sea level and is above cloud base 25 percent of the time during the winter season. The already extensive instrument suite at SPL will be augmented with additional state-of-the-art instruments that are typically used for airborne cloud research by the Stratton Park Engineering Corporation (SPEC). SPL and SPEC will collect in situ cloud and precipitation property measurements while the AMF2 operates at a location approximately 2.4 km west and 2078m in elevation during a winter season.
This deployment will address three long-standing ARM objectives:
1.From a cloud property retrieval perspective, the type of clouds that will be observed during this period will range from stable liquid phase boundary layer clouds to mixed phase clouds to heavily precipitating snow. These cloud types represent some of the most unique challenges for cloud property retrievals and the full Doppler spectra from the scanning cloud radar combined with other AMF2 measurements correlated with continuous in situ data will facilitate development of new algorithms and statistically significant validation of the algorithm results.
2.The data set will be collected in a region of complex terrain. Collecting such a data set has been a long standing goal of ARM and it will present a unique challenge and opportunity for modeling groups.
3.The extensive aerosol data set that will be collected at SPL will allow for investigation of the role of natural and anthropogenic aerosol in cloud and precipitation processes.
