ICECAPS

Lidar support for ICECAPS at Summit, Greenland

15 April 2010 - 25 May 2025

Lead Scientist: Von Walden

Observatory: OSC, SMT

Beginning in May 2010, the Integrated Characterization of Energy, Clouds, Atmospheric State, and Precipitation over Summit (ICECAPS) project, funded through the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Observing Network, is deploying a suite of remote sensors at Summit, Greenland.

With dining facilities and communications gear, the “Big House” at Summit Station serves as the central gathering area for site researchers. (Photo courtesy Summit Station.)

The instrument suite includes a millimeter-wave cloud radar (MMCR), Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI), microwave radiometer profiler, a high-frequency microwave radiometer, microwave precipitation sensor, and other instruments. The project also includes twice-daily radiosonde launches. ARM is contributing to this campaign with a micropulse lidar (MPL) and Vaisala ceilometer to gather information about optically thin clouds commonly found above the Summit site. Combined measurements from these sensors and instruments will result in a comprehensive data set of cloud properties, atmospheric state, precipitation, and radiation. Various modeling studies have shown that the Arctic is very sensitive to man-made climate change. Data from ICECAPS data will provide a complementary data set to ongoing measurements gathered at ARM’s North Slope of Alaska site in Barrow, and the SEARCH site in Eureka, Canada, helping scientists reach a better understanding of the role that clouds play in the radiative budget of the Arctic. The MPL and ceilometer datastreams will be made available in the ARM Data archive, along with other ICECAPS datastreams.

Science Team

David Turner, Lead Principal Investigator, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Matthew Shupe, Co-Investigator, University of Colorado
Von Walden, Co-Investigator, University of Idaho