We’re going to Portugal! We’ll be participating in the Perdigao experiment. You can read more about the project here! Our team will be taking a miniature version of the Collaborative Lower Atmospheric Mobile Profiling System (which we’re calling miniCLAMPS) to study flow over complex terrain. The BLISS group is no stranger to fieldwork. In recent years, the team has participated in several campaigns including the Lower Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiment (LABLE) in northern Oklahoma and Plains Elevated Convection At Night (PECAN) that covered much of the American Great Plains.
Pictured here is full-size CLAMPS during a PECAN deployment. The CLAMPS facility can observe wind flow using a Doppler lidar that comes out of the roof of the trailer. It also measures temperature and moisture profiles in the lowest part of the atmosphere using a microwave radiometer (the mailbox shaped instrument with the blue window sticking out of the trailer) and an Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer, or AERI for short (the large white box on the back of the trailer). For the Perdigao campaign, we are deploying miniCLAMPS which has all the same instruments. Instead of being housed in a trailer, they are deployed separately on the ground and connected by a central computing unit. Once we get settled in Perdigao, we will share some photos of miniCLAMPS in the field.
For now, it is back to prep for the team! The first members leave in just a few days! We are excited to get started on this adventure!
– Elizabeth