POPEYE

Profiling at Oliktok Point to Enhance YOPP Experiments

1 July 2018 - 30 September 2018

Lead Scientist: Gijs de Boer

Observatory: AMF (ARM Mobile Facility 3) - OLI

The Arctic is rapidly evolving, and enhanced predictive capabilities for both weather and climate are urgently required. Therefore, the international community formulated plans for the execution of an extended period of focused observations and modeling of the arctic environment, dubbed the Year of Polar Prediction, or YOPP; YOPP features special observing periods. The first occurred in the spring of 2018 and the second during the late summer and early fall.

POPEYE (Profiling at Oliktok Point to Enhance YOPP Experiments) deployed additional ARM resources to Oliktok Point, Alaska, during the second three-month special observing period (July 1 to September 30, 2018). This included additional radiosonde launches, ARM-operated unmanned aerial systems (DataHawks), and ARM-operated tethered balloons. These instruments conducted routine profiling activities during the special observing period to obtain measurements on atmospheric thermodynamic structure, cloud and precipitation properties, and aerosol properties. Uses for these measurements include:

• conducting detailed studies of arctic cloud and aerosol processes
• informing YOPP modeling efforts through real-time availability for assimilation into operational and research analysis products
• evaluating and improving retrieval algorithms involving ARM remote sensors
• evaluating and improving a variety of modeling tools being used to forecast arctic weather and climate
• initializing and evaluating simulations associated with a potential arctic large-eddy simulation framework similar to the ongoing Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) ARM Symbiotic Simulation and Observation (LASSO) project.