Request for the use of NSF Facilities for Education. Boundary Structure Experiments with Central Minnesota Profiling II (BaSE CaMP II) submitted by

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1 Request for the use of NSF Facilities for Education Boundary Structure Experiments with Central Minnesota Profiling II (BaSE CaMP II) 1. Introduction submitted by Brian Billings and Rodney Kubesh Department of Atmospheric and Hydrologic Sciences Saint Cloud State University Saint Cloud, Minnesota February 2014 This proposal is requesting the use of a Mobile Integrated Sounding System (MISS) primarily in conjunction with the department s Physical Meteorology course (AHS 465), but also with benefits for students enrolled in the concurrent Radar and Satellite Meteorology course (AHS 468), the following semester s Meteorological Instrumentation course (AHS 364), and students taking the sequence of Senior Research Proposal (AHS 451) and Senior Research Project (AHS 452) at any point. Additionally, outreach opportunities are available to students just entering the department, to students in local high school physics courses, and to the general public. MISS was previously deployed to St. Cloud for the original BaSE CaMP experiment in the fall of That deployment was very successful ( in engaging 82 students, including the primary class of 20 meteorology majors, 8 meteorology students who provided forecasting support, 24 students in a high school AP physics class, and 34 general education students who attended an evening seminar for the public. It also resulted in datasets which were incorporated into two semesters of a meteorological analysis software course and an atmospheric dynamics course and one which is being used as the basis for a submission to an AMS journal. Specific references to the original BaSE CaMP will also be made below as needed. The motivation for a second deployment is fourfold. First, it will provide an opportunity for a new group of students to benefit from a real field research experience. The vast majority of major students in the original BaSE CaMP were juniors and seniors, who will have graduated by the time BaSE CaMP II would occur. Second, some students in the first experiment were unable to attend a field deployment due to the lack of flexibility in their work schedule over a one-week period. This can be remedied by increasing the time period of the project to one month. Third, many of the supplemental instrument experiments in BaSE CaMP showed promise and could be tested more formally in a second experiment. Relocating the RASS speakers did produce an observable change in the sampling height, and artificially

2 produced rain revealed certain characteristics of the quality control on the surface station s rain gauge. Lastly, new datasets can be collected which will allow for the study of additional phenomena. The title of the experiment refers to the boundary layer and airmass boundaries, or fronts, both of which were wellsampled during the original BaSE CaMP. A longer deployment which extends significantly into the month of November might allow the opportunity to study the boundary between heavy and light snow in a mesoscale snow band, which is part of the reason the request is tied to the physical meteorology class. In addition to all of the new possibilities, the intercomparison and data quality experiments and outreach of the original project would still be present. 2. Field Deployments To increase the time period of this experiment, EOL staff are requested for an initial 4-5 days of student training, mobile deployments, and long-term setup, and then for an additional 2-3 days for a project wrap-up and any additional mobile deployments. Between those time periods, the MISS would be operated by the faculty and students of the Atmospheric and Hydrologic Science department at a fixed location for a period of three weeks. The mobile deployments will be described first, as they will largely follow the same pattern as the original BaSE CaMP. On 29 September 2012, the MISS was deployed to a remote site near the town of Richmond, MN in a shallow basin along the Sauk River Valley. The synoptic conditions were very quiescent with Minnesota directly under a closed 500 mb high, so the timing was chosen to be in the early morning to capture the breakup of the morning cold pool inversion. Students were able to observe the very strong inversion both in the radiosonde launches and by taking handheld instrument observations from the bottom and top of a 50 m ridge. A 0.67-km WRF simulation of this event has been completed, and the case is currently being prepared for publication in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology with two student co-authors. This paper will be of particular interest to local forecasters, as a private company in the Twin Cities forecasts inversion breakup for a construction company in North Carolina. Obviously, this site will be reused during BaSE CaMP II, and if similar synoptic conditions occur, sampling a second cold pool later in the year would be a good goal. However, even under more disturbed flow, the presence of nearby topography allows for a different scientific focus depending on the wind direction. Northerly flow would put the MISS to the lee of ridge, possibly allowing gravity waves to be sampled. For southerly flow, MISS would be located in a possible region of flow blocking and boundary layer separation. Along-valley flow would allow for investigating of enhancement due to channeling, since Richmond is located near a constriction in the width. All of these events would again involve students supplementing MISS observations with portable handheld instrumentation.

3 During BaSE CaMP, a gated parking lot on the south end of campus was used to store MISS between deployments and for IOPs which were not dependent on a specific location. This site would serve well for the long-term fixed operation of MISS, especially since a Campbell Scientific weather station will be installed there by the end of the Spring 2014 semester, allowing intercomparison experiments with the MISS surface station. While there may be practical advantages to using land owned by the university located outside city limits, the Q-lot location will serve as a reliable backup. While the department may be able to supply extra helium beyond what can be carried by MISS, there will certainly not be enough radiosondes to perform launches on each day of the three week fixed deployment. Therefore, two types of events will be targeted: frontal passages and banded snowfall events. While a cold front passage was sampled during the original BaSE CaMP and used as the basis of a WRF simulation for demonstration in the software class, there may be opportunities to improve on these observations for a second event. The department is pursuing the purchase of a low-cost radiosonde system, which could be combined with MISS soundings in two ways. First, students could take the department radiosonde system to a remote location to achieve simultaneous profiles across the front (or use three soundings if launches are made near the time of the NWS sounding from the Twin Cities). Second, if the systems operate on different frequencies, launches could be performed every 45 minutes, as opposed to the traditional 90 minute intervals. If a snow band should develop over St. Cloud during the fixed deployment period, the MISS would obviously provide invaluable observations of the vertical velocity and temperature profile to combine with microphysical observations collected by the department s laser disdrometer and any equipment which could be carried along with MISS. If a snow band develops near, but not over St. Cloud, the MISS observations would still be valuable as a control point. Students could travel (safely) to the snowfall maximum to collect separate radiosonde profiles and snow microphysics observations. While October is a time of little snowfall in Saint Cloud, November has seen several major snowstorms. In fact, five of the twenty-five largest snowfalls in Saint Cloud history occurred during the time period covered by this request. Obviously, both of these events will require heavy forecasting support from students enrolled in Synoptic Meteorology (AHS 385) and Current Weather Analysis I and II (AHS 480 and 481). 3. Additional Educational Activities In addition, to the event-focused activities, many of the instrumentation focused deployments during the first field experiment would be repeated during BaSE CaMP II. MISS would again be deployed beneath the 500-foot radio tower which carries department anemometers. The original experiment occurred under a strong, southerly flow, but other directions may reveal more obvious

4 exposure errors in the tower anemometers. The St. Cloud Municipal Airport would also be visited again to expand on the RASS experiments which were first attempted during BaSE CaMP, both relocation of the speakers and the use of alternate audio signals. If more students attend this deployment, the experiment tracking GPS radiosondes with phototheodolites could also be reattempted. An additional experiment which was not completed during BaSE CaMP would involve moving the MISS up to the main campus on a Saturday or Sunday to take advantage of the portable surface station and investigate the various errors occurring at non-wmo approved exposure sites. In addition to these hands-on educational activities, the classroom lecture format from BaSE CaMP would be used again for the MISS staff. A lecture on radiative transfer principles for radar and disdrometers would be most useful for the physical meteorology class. The data from BaSE CaMP was used for classroom activities in several classes, one example being atmospheric dynamics where students calculated roughness lengths from two soundings taken from the airport and the campus and compared them with their expected values. Similar activities could be constructed for the dynamics class in the spring. Finally, the department s AHS 420 course is called Special Problems and can be used for a wide variety of topics. An ideal situation would be to offer a 1-credit 420 course in Fall 2014 titled Meteorological Field Research, which would focus on fundamentals of field programs in the weeks leading up to the deployment and which would provide an easier avenue for student involvement during regular class hours for students at a variety of levels. 4. K-12 and public outreach During BaSE CaMP, the MISS staff visited the AP physics class at St. Cloud Tech High School. This should make another visit during the course of BaSE CaMP II particularly easy to arrange. A visit to a second high school during transport out of St. Cloud could also be possible. The facilities at SCSU served well for the public seminar during BaSE CaMP, though more aggressive advertising during the course of the fixed deployment will likely boost attendance for a return visit.

5 Table 1: Summary of student participation Course Title and Name AHS 465: Physical Meteorology AHS 468: Radar and Satellite Meteorology AHS 385: Synoptic Meteorology AHS 480/481: Current Weather Analysis I/II AHS 420: Meteorological Field Research AHS 364: Meteorological Instruments Description of involvement Primary focus; in-class lecture on applications of radiative transfer to MISS and disdrometers and participation of students in field experiments Using collected data to illustrate principles of wind profilers and their data display Forecasting support for field experiments, particularly for the Richmond deployment Discussions in briefing format of the expected weather for the various field deployments Possible elective course discussing principles of field work and allowing student participation Spring semester; can still benefit from data collected by radiosondes and surface station Table 2: Proposed Timeline Number enrolled or future number of seats October 17 SCSU campus In-class lecture for physical class by EOL staff October 18 Richmond Town Hall Max 8 hour period: Field experiment studying dynamics of frontal passage or appropriate complex terrain problem October 19 SCSU campus 1 pm: Field experiment studying exposure effects October 20 St Cloud Airport (KSTC) 5 pm: Instrumentation experiments involving RASS, radiosonde wind derivations, and ASOS comparisons October 21 St. Cloud Tech High School KVSC Radio Tower 11 am: Classroom visit for AP physics class 5 pm: Instrumentation experiments involving radiosondetower wind comparisons October 22- November 16 Fixed MISS deployment site SCSU faculty and student led operations to capture frontal passages, snow bands, and other events November 17 SCSU campus 7 pm: Public seminar by EOL staff, including results November 18 SCSU campus Project wrap-up activities, including extra experiments

6 Version 4 February 2012 Facility Request Form for Educational Activities Part I: General Information Requestor Name Institution and Address Phone and Faculty Advisor Name (if student requestor) Drs. Brian J. Billings & Rodney J. Kubesh St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN St. bjbillings@stcloudstate.edu Cloud Part II: Project Description Project Title Boundary Structure Experiments with Central Minnesota Profiling II Project Location St. Cloud, Minnesota, vicinity Start and End Dates of Field Deployment Oct 18- Nov 18, 2014 NSF Facilities requested (type and # of systems) 1 MISS Number of Expendables requested (if applicable) 25 radiosondes Part III: Educational Activities Description Number of students actively involved Desired training activities conducted by Facility Staff including time in the field Desired teaching activities conducted by Facility Staff including time in the field Additional special requirements that pertain to Facility support Ancillary/Opportunistic Outreach Activities Graduate: Undergraduate: 16 Training of students to assist in MISS deployment and launching radiosondes, seven days One lecture for physical meteorology class and possibly for field research class University Students: K-12: At least one high school visit arranged through appropriate physics teacher Public: A seminar delivered by facility staff to the general public Part IV: Operational Requirements Please specify data access needs (e.g., real time) Please specify data analysis needs Please specify communications needs