Notes from the Field

To research the wintry tundra near Denali National Park, scientists often turn to a four-legged mode of transport to reach their field — sled dogs. At Eight Mile Lake, just outside the Park boundaries, lies an important study site for NASA. Dr. Ted Schuur from the University of Northern Arizona operates a suite of instruments […]

The laboratory for ABoVE is vast. The field campaign – the Arctic Boreal and Vulnerability Experiment – covers 2.5 million square miles of tundra, mountains, permafrost, lakes, and forests in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. ABoVE scientists are using satellites and aircraft study this formidable terrain as it changes in a warming climate, but remote sensing […]

By Christine Dow We have arrived back safe and sound after 11 days crossing the Southern Ocean. Our exit from Jang Bogo involved one last (very short) helicopter ride taking us to the Araon icebreaker so that they didn’t have to re-break ice to get back into port. I stayed up till the wee hours […]

By Ryan Walker Before it was time to recheck our GPS stations and download data from them, the icebreaker Araon arrived at Jang Bogo, bringing new scientists, a new helicopter crew, fresh food, and other supplies. Because of heavy sea ice cover on the bay, the arrival was in slow motion, taking most of a […]

By Christine Dow The big day had arrived. We were due to fly to our tiltmeters to collect the data that they had been gathering for two weeks. once this was the first time we had ever set these instruments up in the field, all fingers were crossed that we had been precise enough in […]

Today’s post will be a ‘guest’ post from Luke Madaus, expert weather forecaster, numerical modeler and graduate student from the University of Washington. A Day in the life of an OLYMPEX forecaster by Luke Madaus. When people think of field campaigns, they usually think of windblown scientists, struggling against the elements to get those critical […]

The impact of CYGNSS data in tropical cyclone models can be evaluated long before the satellites ever leave the ground... with the help of an OSSE.

By Christine Dow The Nansen Ice Shelf, where we have installed our GPS, is notoriously windy. This is clear from the blue ice on the surface and complete lack of snow, which gets rapidly swept away by katabatic winds (winds driven down from the glacier towards the sea by differences in pressure induced by the […]

Ground-based weather radars are a critical component of the OLYMPEX project on the Olympic Peninsula. Situated near the coast, NASA’s NPOL radar records precipitation data over the ocean and toward the mountains. As with any scanning weather radar, the beam width and height above ground increases with distance from the radar. Therefore, even though NPOL is […]