ARL Weekly News – February 25, 2023
| Recent Activities |
DCNet Site Upgrades Include Updated Towers and Instrumentation.
Randy White, Tom Wood, and Dominick Christensen (ATDD) traveled to Washington DC where they were met by Paul Kelley, Xinrong Ren, Phil Stratton, and Winston Luke (ASMD) to upgrade the DCNet measurement site atop the Herbert C. Hoover Building (HCHB), home to the Commerce Department Headquarters.
The site consists of two 10-m towers on the north and south end of the building’s roof for measurements of meteorological and turbulence parameters, as well as a HALO Photonics wind lidar system deployed by ESRL’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) with a 2-km vertical range for wind profile measurements.
The 20-year old aluminum towers were replaced with new, non-tapered triangular towers; all of the meteorological instrumentation (3-D sonic anemometers, T, RH, solar radiation, and propeller-driven wind vanes) were replaced with new equipment; TB4 tipping-bucket rain gauges were added to each tower; and the obsolete 3G communications modems were upgraded to 4G technology. Security restrictions at the building restrict access to the rooftop installation, limiting site maintenance operations. Upgrades to the site will be completed in March 2023.
USA Today Fact Check
Howard Diamond provided feedback to a USA Today reporter for this media item: Fact check: Carbon dioxide has an effect on the climate, contrary to post. Dr. Diamond wrote that “We have clear empirical evidence of CO2’s ability to restrict outgoing long-wave radiation – e.g., heat – from escaping from the surface of the planet back to space.”