Today the weather was cool and calm with high scattered clouds. The 2nd IOP ended at noon and all soundings went well, including our normal one at 1615 today. Bill left this morning.
At ISS1 site I walked around and verified that all RASS speakers were still operating, and adjusted one of the webcams for Bill. All instruments were doing well. It seems that after Bill changed the duty cycle on the Wind Profiler, it is seeing up to 3-4km now. At 1425 MST the 50V power supply was reading 3.43A and the 31V supply 1.843 with 100m mode running. AT 1430 MST the 50V supply went to 2.89A and the 31V supply went to 1.898A with 150m RASS mode. The enclosure temperature dips to around 14C at night and rises to 32C during the day. If it starts to get closer to 40C I will probably plug in one of the AC units and only run it during the day time.
At the 1615 sounding Isabel and I trained 3 more students (Becca, Johnathan, and Peter). I also took some measurement estimates to create a sketch of the sounding site, which will be posted later.
I also wanted to note that yesterday (1/16) I checked on the fluid level for the LIDAR lens cleaning as well as the desiccant and both were good. As long as conditions are safe I plan to check these again before I go back to Boulder.
The rest of the day I helped Isabel with ISFS tasks. We went to the Provo River Supersite, and Isabel did an update to the DSM. We also went to the South Pivot site to take a soil sample.
Isabel getting ready to take a soil sample and giving me a refresher.
Becca, Johnathan and Peter being trained on the sounding system
Another cool, calm and clear day with just some widely scattered strato-cirrus, and some haze. A non-fog or ephemeral fog IOP started at local noon today and will run overnight until tomorrow noon with 8 soundings. We did the first two soundings (around 2:30pm and 4:15pm), the Utah group will do the remaining soundings.
Liz arrived last night and she assisted Isabel with lowering and raising the DC supersite tower, assisted me on the lidar and camera, and carried out a sounding.
At the ISS1 site at Liz's suggestion, upped the duty cycle of the winds mode on the Modular Profiler. Previously the winds mode had been running at a duty cycle of 3.8% but increased to 5.3% by decreasing the PRT from 70 microsec to 50 microsec at 1715 UTC. This decreased the range aliasing from 10.5km to 7.5km. Increased the coherent integration from 30 to 40 to keep the velocity aliasing around 20 m/s. Kept RASS mode unchanged with a duty cycle of 4.17%. In winds mode the 50V power supply went from 3.16A to 4.24A and the 31V supply went from 1.756A to 1.86A. In RASS mode the 50V was 3.30A and the 31V was 1.905A around 1730UT. The duty cycle change didn't change the SNR and winds much (should have only changed the SNR by about 1.4 dB), but curiously seems to have affected the vertical velocity, perhaps because of a change in RFI bands.
Switched profiler into CFACT_DBP_RIM_100m_Code4 mode (had accidentally started the profiler in a LOTOS mode with very similar parameters). There was no discernable change in the measurements after correcting the mode at 0412 UTC (Jan 17).
Cleared off the CL51 ceilometer, NR01, and camera at ISS1 around 1740 UT.
The sounding system is ingesting the surface met (as Holger found when he checked the mwx files), although it is not obvious while carrying out a sounding because it no longer shows the surface data on the main sounding screen for some unknown reason.
At the lidar site, checked the lidar, secured and adjusted the ELP camera to point better at the DC reservoir.
Isabel and Liz doing the 2:30pm sounding and Sebastian and his helpers doing the 4:15pm sounding
Another calm mostly cool clear day, with a little scattered cirus and some haze. The PIs have called a non-fog IOP for 24 hours starting at noon tomorrow (Sunday 16 Jan).
The big news today was the installation of the quick look plots on the web site (thank you Isabel!). The plots are available at:
- ISS1 Preliminary plots (wind profiler, RASS, CL51, surface met, webcam)
- ISS2 Preliminary plots (soundings, wind lidar, CL61, surface met, webcam)
There are still some bugs and gaps, but most plots (including sounding Skew-T plots) are available now, and more will be available in the coming days. One interesting feature is a small disturbance in the pressure trace around 13 UTC which correlates with pressure disturbances apparently from the Tonga volcanic eruption last night.
Besides work on various aspects of the plotting and web pages, other tasks worked on included installation of a microseven web camera at ISS1 pointed at the Deer Creek reservoir, tweaking of the winds and RASS processing on the Modular Profiler, and tidying up at the sounding trailer.
During the sounding this afternoon (4:15pm, 2315 UTC), the sounding software didn't pick up the surface met data (although the DSM reports polling from the sounding system), and later closed during the sounding. Upon restarting the software a few minutes later, it didn't appear there was any data was missing.
The Modular Profiler was getting winds to the 1.5 to 2 km level, lower than recent days apparently due to a dry layer aloft as can be seen in this afternoon's sounding. In winds mode, the power draw at 22UT was 2.63A on the 50V supply and 1.75A on the 31V supply. In RASS mode the draw was 2.88A and 1.89A on the 50V and 31V supplies.
Isabel showing off the web plots on the ISS2 data manager computer in the ISFS base trailer.
A cool, calm, mostly sunny day, although there was quite a bit of haze at times (for example see the photo below).
Some progress in sounding data ccommunication and plotting today. Isabel and Gary got the surface met data ingest in the MW41 system working today. This data is generated from the Lufft WS800 and Vaisala PTB220 instruments on the 3-meter tower whereby the DSM emulates a WXT and feeds the data via a serial line into the sounding computer. This system seemed to work well for this afternoons 2330UT sounding. We also corrected the sensor height parameters in the MW41 software, the GPS antenna height was very close but the pressure sensor was about a foot lower than initially specified. Isabel also got the plotting for the soundings working on the data manager computer back the ISFS base trailer, generating profile and Skew-T plots. The next step will be getting them onto our web site.
At the ISS1 trailer, I tracked down a bug in the RASS processing software and we are now generating consensus virtual temperature profiles. This too requires further work to get onto the website. The RASS returns continue to be strong, the profiles to the 1.3 to 1.6 km range, and winds to the 2 to 3 km range. The distributed amp power supply drew 2.48A at 50V and 1.74A at 31V in winds mode, and 2.90A at 50V and 1.89A at 31V for the RASS mode around 21UT.
There is a potential non-fog IOP starting Sunday afternoon (Jan 16) overnight into Monday.
Localized haze down the valley over the Deer Creek reservoir as seen around 1:30pm MST
Partly cloudy with scattered cirrus this morning, increasing in the afternoon, light winds.
Lots of miscellaneous tasks today: took F350 truck into shop to get a quote for new tires (the current tires don't grip well in the snow and ice, and also in the muddy fields), attended CFACT meeting (no IOP likely for a few days), testing microseven camera, visited the aerosol trailer. Helped Isabel diagnose issues with a DSM at the Provo River supersite, accompanied by cows who cleaned our boots.
The wind lidar is getting returns to around 4 km in low elevation scans.
At the ISS1 site, the Modular Profiler is getting winds to around 2 km and RASS to 1.2 km. Power supply draw was 3.29A at 50V and 1.77A on 31V in winds mode, and in RASS mode was 3.50A at 50V and 1.916A at 31V at 18UT.
Sounding training with Zhaoxia and four students for this afternoon's regular 4:15pm sounding. Mostly went smoothly, although the surface met data is still missing.
A calm, cold, and clear morning, increasing high clouds during the afternoon.
The first IOP ran last night and this morning, officially ending at local noon. No fog was observed, although there was some light haze which fits with the high aerosol counts reported by Gannet and the smokey air forecast from NWS. All the ISS instruments worked well, although we were still having lingering issues:
Sounding computer: rsync problems with the data manager computer meant that data wasn't transferred during the IOP, however Isabel managed to get it working this afternoon. The surface met ingest isn't working yet, although Gary has some suggestions which I will try tomorrow. Installed open office on the sounding computer this afternoon so that we now will have a sounding log. I am in the process of gathering the missing information.
CL61 Ceilometer: after the power outage yesterday, the CL61 restarted with the wrong time sync and generated files dated 2010. It should be possible to recover this data.
The wind lidar ran well with the high aerosol levels, seeing 4 to 5 km in the low-level scans, and did a good job of documenting the variable drainage flows during the night.
At the ISS1 site, the Modular Profiler ran well producing winds up to about the 3 km level, and RASS up to the 1.5 km level. At 22UT in winds mode, the amplifer 50V supply was drawing 3.04A and the 31V supply drew 1.76A. In RASS mode the 50V supply drew 3.38A and the 31V supply drew 1.915A.
Sebastian, Eric, and Alexei launching the last sounding of IOP1
The first IOP began this afternoon. It was a sunny mostly clear cool day, with a little haze. Gannet reported significant aerosol concentrations and that could be seen in the somewhat increased range of the wind lidar (although it was still modest at around 2-3 km compared to summer measurements). No report yesterday as we were very busy preparing for the IOP today, including setting up lidar scans, profiler modes, training students, helping Steve with the telescoping towers, etc.
The IOP today was called because there is a possibility of a little fog tonight, perhaps being amplified by possible precip. It is being called an "Ephemeral Fog" IOP which means soundings at 1420, 1615, 2215, 0015, 0215, 0415, 0715, and 1015 local times. NCAR launched the first two soundings, and the University are launching the subsequent soundings (although I also joined the 2215 sounding to provide a little more training). There were a couple of issues with the first two soundings, the first being a power failure due to a GFI tripping apparently when a breaker was swapped out for one of the university trailers (this also caused a brief outage in the CL61 and DSM data), and the second when the ground check unit was unresponsive - cured by rebooting the computer. There is still a network issue connecting to the sounding computer so data is not yet being transferred to the DM.
At the wind lidar, adjusted the scans and attempted a backscatter calibration, although it's not clear that the conditions were appropriate so will try again tomorrow. The modular wind profiler continues to work well. In winds mode at 2030UT it was drawing 3.13A on the 50V supply and 1.76A on the 31V supply and consistently getting winds to 1 km and sometimes up to 3km. In RASS mode the draw was 3.49A and 1.92 A on the 50 and 31 V supplies respectively, and RASS returns were often up to 1.5 km.
First nighttime sounding of the campaign
Cool calm day, mostly clear sky with occasional scattered clouds.
Steve and Isabel got the Ubquiti link running to the sounding site. It had been very unreliable despite having good line of sight over a distance of only about 350 meters, but by rising the antenna to 3 meters at the sounding end and about 6 meters at the base trailer end it has become much more stable. So far nidas data from the surface met and CL61 ceilometer data at the sounding site is being transferred back to the ISS2 data manager, however the sounding system is not yet configured for data transfers.
After discussions with Sebastian, programmed up some new scans for the wind lidar and are testing them out. The scans include a 0-degree elevation scan over Deer Creek reservoir, a 2 deg scan all around (the land slopes gently upward towards the north so a full 0-deg scan to the north would be blocked), low level RHI scans towards the reservoir as well as up the valley (towards the Provo River supersite) and Daniels Canyon. Also are testing a high elevation scan (75 deg) for VAD winds instead of our usual 35 deg VAD scan.
Installed our third PA-II-SD aerosol sensor at the Provo River supersite, where it will use Sebastian's mobile wifi network to connect to Purple Air's cloud service. The data can be accessed at this link.
Launched the daily sounding on schedule at 4:15pm MST (2315 UTC). The leaky Helium cylinder from yesterday was still leaking slightly today so moved the regulator to a different cylinder and no leaks were detected, suggesting an issue with the previous cylinder fitting.
PurpleAir aerosol sensor (white dome device with QR code) mounted on a post next to the University of Utah Halo lidar and web camera) at the Provo River supersite.
Another cool partly cloudy day.
Started off the day at the ISS1 profiler site where we removed the covers from the RASS dishes that we had installed at setup to stop too much snow building up in the dishes. One of the four covers had blown off at some point, however there was only about an inch of ice and snow inside. Started up the RASS from about 17UTC in rass_150m mode. The volume was set to around 7 - 7.5 VAC (as measured by a Fluke multimeter) which produced around 70 dB (as measured by an iphone) acoustic noise at around 30 meters range, and RASS signal up to around 800m AGL - although that will vary a lot with time. On the 50V power supply, RASS mode is drawing around 3.83A and on the 31V supply around 1.93A. In winds mode (100m), the draw on the 50V supply is 3.46A and on the 31V supply is 1.77A.
At the sounding site, we installed the surface-met 3-meter tower (with Lufft WS800 and PTB220 sensors). There had been some concern that the Lufft (which has a small radar for measuring precip) might cause radio frequency interference for Eric's Micro Rain Radar since both use the 24 GHz band, however no obvious interference was been seen so far. Also repositioned the Ubquiti network link to the ISFS base to try to improve the link (which only operates intermittently). The signal strength improved a little, however still drops out.
We gave Eric, Gannet and Pauline a lesson on our sounding system. This went well, except that the balloon burst a little earlier than usual (around 250 hPa) for unknown reasons. During some training on switching to a new Helium cylinder, we found that there is a small Helium leak on the regulator/flow mete board, which we will investigate further tomorrow.
Sounding lession with Gannet (and family), Pauline, and Eric.
A partly cloudy day with temperatures reaching about 10C before a windy period cooled things down this afternoon.
Today we worked on the sounding site and got the radiosonde system working in time for the first sounding of the campaign around 4:25pm (2325 UTC). There were a few issues setting up the system, mainly to do with communicating with the ground check unit and configuration. Also the surface met isn't up yet, so this first sounding used its own measurement as the surface data, and the system isn't networked yet. The launch itself went well and data was received by the sounding system successfully.
At the sounding site we also set up a Ubiquiti data link back to the ISFS base trailer, however it seems to be unreliable so we will check the position and alignment of the antennas tomorrow. In addition we set up the CL61 polarization ceilometer however the date/time stamp on this initial data appears to be about two months off and since the network is flakey it is difficult to check and fix remotely.
Alexei launching the first radiosonde sounding of CFACT. The sounding trailer and CL ceilometer are visible in the background.
A relatively warm but overcast day, reaching almost 5C, with brief light drizzle.
The main activity was at the sounding site which is in a field near the ISFS Deer Creek supersite. The access road and field are snowy and slushy making access with the truck tricky. We set up most of the sounding system and ran power cables to the trailer, although haven't hooked up yet since we are still working on getting cables into the trailer.
At the profiler site, cleared off about 4 inches of wet snow from the east panel but curiously the north and south panels were mostly clear. Set the profiler into 100-meter mode only since that mode seems to have the best wind measurements.
At the lidar site moved the USB camera, it had been on the top railing of the wind lidar platform on top of the lidar trailer, however there was a concern that the camera housing was partially blocking the lidar beam so it was moved down to a lower railing. Also installed an All-Sky camera and an aerosol sampler on the lidar platform. These are IOT devices so do not go into the usual data manager stream but use their own cloud services. The devices and their data servers are
Allsky camera: BloomSky-1 camera: images available here
Aerosol sensor: PurpleAir PA-II-SD: data available here
Note there is also an identical PurpleAir sensor at the ISS1 site (installed in December) and the data from that is available here
The BloomSky all-sky camera (white dome device), USB camera (directed at the Deer Creek reservoir), and the PurpleAir aerosol sensor (device with QR code) next to the wind lidar on top of the lidar trailer at the Railway Service pad site.
A wet cold day, with temperatures in the 0 - 3C range. Snow had been forecast for most of the day with up to 5 inches of accumulation, however it appears that most of that fell as rain with occasional sleet mixed in.
The main news of the day was Dan clearing the road into the sounding site with a rented skid steer (tracked) snow plow. He did a great plowing job enabling the sounding trailer to be driven into the site this afternoon. His snow clearing also enabled the PIs to drive in equipment to the chemistry trailer and provided easier access to the DC supersite. Following his work, we delivered a couple of pick-up truck loads of equipment such as the CL61 ceilometer and sounding rack and computer. At the adjacent railway site other work included unpacking the CL61 and setting up an aerosol sensor on top of the lidar trailer.
At the ISS1 site, dug out some more snow and Dan plowed out the snow berm that had been blocking vehicle access to the site. I also ran some tests on the Modular Profiler adjusting the lowest ranges. By raising the lowest sampled gate (say from 200-300m to around 400-500m) then the lowest gate that actually gets good data lowers to around the 400m level (from around the 600m level previously). This suggests a problem in the partial decoding, perhaps due to non-linear behavior or saturation in the signals at the lowest gates. The rain/snow mix complicates interpretation of this analysis so I'll take another look at the lower range gate issue on a clear day.
Dan operating the skid steer snowplow and backing in the sounding trailer into the sounding site.
A warmer (0C - 4C) but overcast day with occasional snow flakes. Lou arrived last night.
At the profiler site, cleared the snow around the amplifier enclosure, opened it up and disconnected the pipe heater since the electronics seem to be keeping it warm enough (around 18 - 20C, whereas previously it had been just above freezing). The profiler is still running an alternating 100-meeter and 150-meter mode (both with 4-bit completmentary phase coding) to test which might be better for the project. The 100m mode appears to be providing winds down to about 500 - 600m, whereas the 150m mode only gets down to around 800m. The upper level is highly variable (today 3-4 km without the dry layer break we saw yesterday), although there does seem to be an extra 100 - 200 m coverage with the 150m mode. Today the 100m mode drew about 3.25A on the main 50V supply, and the 150m mode drew about 4.54A.
At the lidar site, more precisely leveled the lidar by making fine adjustments on the lidar itself as well as with the lidar trailer jacks. Now the pitch is approximately within 0.01 deg of perfect level and the roll about 0.015 deg.
We drove down to the Salt Lake City area to pick up a cargo trailer that we will use for the sounding system. Unfortunately the snow plower operator we hoped would clear the road into the site gave up half way through the job, so we can't yet get the trailer into position. Apparently he intends to retry tomorrow although with more snow in the forecast there is a concern about whether it will be possible to get it in there.
Arrived back out at CFACT to complete setup and restart equipment for operations.
The weather today was sunny with fog to the south and very cold this morning, -15C, slowing warming to -5C this afternoon with increasing cloud. There was about 6 - 8 inches of snow on the field around the site, although it had drifted to 1 - 2 feet in the profiler enclosure. Overall the ISS1 site seems okay, although we'll need to get a snowplow in to drive into the site (Dan is arranging this for tomorrow), and the portapotty got blown over and pushed across the field - apparently in high winds on Dec 26 when winds gusted to 56 mph at the nearby Heber airport. There didn't appear to be any other damage apart from a missing piece of plywood that had been covering one of the RASS dishes.
Dug out much of the profiler and other areas around the site this morning. Cleared snow from the north and east panels, although not yet from the south panel.
Inside the ISS1 trailer was cold (around -3C). The main heater/ac unit is only working intermittently and makes a loud rattling noise so turned it off. There might be some ice built up on the fan. Fortunately we also have a couple of oil panel heaters and they warmed up the trailer nicely by the afternoon.
Warmed up the profiler and gradually turned on sections of the electronics with John and Liz's remote guidance solving a couple of power supply glitches. Operational from about 22:50 UT with the main power supply drawing 3.46A at 50V in 100 meter mode, and 4.87A in 150 meter mode. Getting winds from about 600m up to around 4km AGL with gap in the 2-3km zone, presumably due to a dry layer.
Checked on the wind lidar this afternoon. The lidar laptop had a glitch and required a hard reboot, but the lidar itself seems to be running okay with status indicators all green, although I looked at the data in detail yet.
ISS1 site on 3 Jan 2022. Note the blown-over port-a-potty to the left.
Cloud clearing and gradually becoming warmer. This was the last day for the initial setup crew (Bill, John, Liz & Lou), although Gary will remain to work on the software side and assist the ISFS crew.
Today we started at the profiler site where Liz drew a site plan (see separate entry), John did an inventory of sensors, Lou worked on tidying up the site, Bill installed a WiFi camera to monitor the site and a Purple Air sensor to measure aerosols concentrations. At the Railway site, we installed the GPS Water Vapor sensor, added the wiper fluid container to the wind lidar, a WiFi camera to monitor the lidar, set up the Data Manager computer in the ISFS base trailer, and met with PI Eric Pardyjak.
Installing the GPS Water Vapor sensor and working on the Wind Lidar
Most of the hardware side of the ISS setup is complete except for the sounding site adjacent to the DC Supersite. Unfortunately, this site still doesn't have power due to delays with the electrical contractor. The ISS components there will be the MW41 sounding system, a 3m surface met tower with Lufft WS800 and PTB200, and a CL61 ceilometer. These items will be installed by Bill, Lou, and Isabel in January.
The ISS1 trailer and sensors at the North Pivot site