The new and improved Southern Great Plains

 
Poster PDF

Authors

John R Schatz — ARM Climate Research Facility
David Kent Breedlove — Southern Great Plains
David Swank — Southern Great Plains
Daniel Dean Hartsock — University of Oklahoma
Douglas L Sisterson — Argonne National Laboratory

Category

Infrastructure & Outreach

Description

During the past several years the SGP has been undergoing a major configuration change that has resulted in new and exciting capabilities. The SGP instrumentation previously contained in 31 measurement sites in a 55,000-square-mile grid has shrunk to 21 sites and to a grid size less than 9000 square miles, for better alignment to current general circulation models. As new sites were located and installed in this smaller grid, SGP took advantage and made improvements in the layout, communication enclosure, and instrument stand design of these measurement sites. Sites not in the new domain were retired and remediated. Also, to meet new scientific emphasis and thanks to Recovery Act funds, the SGP installed three X-band radars and one C-band radar and relocated the three existing 915-MHz profilers, bringing them in closer to the Central Facility to support the new radars. These new capabilities proved very useful during the DOE/NASA collaboration campaign Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment, or MC3E. This large-scale campaign was created to gather detailed information to answer questions about convective systems. The use of the SGP network of radars, NASA’s aircraft, and a very active convective season created a winning combination and very successful campaign.