POPEYE

The Arctic is rapidly evolving, and enhanced predictive capabilities for both weather and climate are urgently required. Therefore, the international community has 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. The YOPP features two special observing periods, with the first occurring in the spring of 2018 and the second during the late summer and early fall.

POPEYE (Profiling at Oliktok Point to Enhance YOPP Experiments) will deploy additional ARM resources to Oliktok Point, Alaska, during the second three-month special observing period (1 July 2018 – 30 September 2018). This includes additional radiosonde launches, ARM-operated unmanned aerial systems (DataHawks), and ARM-operated tethered balloons. These instruments will conduct routine profiling activities over the course of the special observing period to obtain measurements on atmospheric thermodynamic structure, cloud and precipitation properties, and aerosol properties. These measurements will be used for a variety of purposes, including to:

• conduct detailed studies of arctic cloud and aerosol processes
• inform YOPP modeling efforts through real-time availability for assimilation into operational and research analysis products
• evaluate and improve retrieval algorithms involving ARM remote sensors
• evaluate and improve a variety of modeling tools being used to forecast arctic weather and climate
• initialize and evaluate simulations associated with a potential Arctic large-eddy simulation framework similar to the ongoing ARM LASSO project.

OLI Data Sources