Michael Douglas
NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory
24 April 2009, 2:00 PM
National Weather Center, Room 5600
120 David L. Boren Blvd.
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK
Directions to the NWC (.pdf, 60 kb)
A major limitation of many field programs is the shortage of deployable radiosounde systems rather than the lack of funds for the radiosoundings themselves. As an example, GPS-radiosonde observations made 4 times a day on 10 different days during a “typical” field program requires about $10K in radiosondes, balloons and gas consumables per site. Given that commercial radiosonde systems can be ~ $50-80K or more, it may take perhaps a half dozen field programs (carried out over perhaps a decade or more) for radiosonde costs to equal the purchase cost of the radiosonde ground station. This situation tends to discourage purchasing large number of sounding systems that will be used only occasionally – hence the current situation of most field programs being “sounding-poor”.
NSSL is purchasing and supporting field trials this year of a new, low-cost radiosonde system, along with a new GPS radiosonde. The radiosonde system consists of a tripod-mounted vertical antenna together with a processor module that is connected to a user-supplied laptop computer. The entire system (antenna and processor) is available for approximately $10K.
This talk summarizes the new system and discusses some possible applications. It is argued that such a low-cost radiosonde system could be widely deployed in both research programs and in operational activities. Operational applications might include a seasonally augmented, adaptive sounding network across the Caribbean Sea region for improving hurricane track forecasts and an all-year adaptive sounding network over the western US for improving 12-48 hr severe weather forecasts over the central and eastern US. The requirements for making such sounding networks highly cost-effective are outlined.
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