Welcome to the Howard University, Beltsville Research Campus

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Welcome to the Howard University, Beltsville
Research Campus

• Purpose of this open house
• Introduce the Beltsville Site Capabilities to
  foster a close collaboration between NASA and HU

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NASA/GSFC-Howard Research Collaborations at
Beltsville

• Enhance the capacity of HU to conduct research in
  atmospheric observations for the improvement of
  weather, climate, and air quality prediction
• Facility for hands-on student training in
  instrumentation and atmospheric observation
• Contribute to national and international climate
  and environmental monitoring (SURFRAD, CEOP,
  BSRN, etc)

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Capabilities and Ongoing Research
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Passive Radiation Measurement

• Instruments
• Research Objectives
• Radiative Forcing
• Monitoring cloud and aerosol optical properties
• Indirect effect of aerosols on clouds
• Validation of satellite algorithms and radiative
  transfer schemes in models

MFRSR 6 bands 415, 500, 610, 665, 862, and
940nm. Direct, diffuse, and total solar
irradiances
RSS-1024 350 to 1075 nm. Direct, diffuse, and
total solar irradiances 0.3 nm FWHM at 360-3 nm
at 1100 nm OOB 10-5
Microwave Radiometer Cloud liquid water and
total column water vapor
Broadband Radiometers Up/Down SW and LW for
surface energy budget
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Atmosphere-Surface Measurements

• Measurements
• 31 m Flux tower
• Subsurface ground heat flux soil temperature
  and moisture
• Wind profiler (MDE)
• Raman Lidar
• Radiosonds

• Objectives
• Investigate atmosphere-surface interaction/boundar
  y layer processes over heterogeneous environment
• Validation of model/WRF physics and other
  modeling studies
• Monitoring

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Air Quality (MDE, UMCP, NASA, HU)

• Upper Air
• Upper Air Profiler and RASS (wind speed
  direction 0-4km and temperature 0-1.5km)
• Surface
• O3, NOx, CO
• 56 VOCs via canister samplers and Gas
  Chromatograph / Flame Ionization Detection
• 7 Carbonyls via tube samplers and Liquid
  Chromatograph
• 42 Toxic Compounds via canister samplers and Gas
  Chromatograph / Mass Selective Detector
• Surface Particles
• PM2.5 from FRM (Daily), TEOM (Hourly), BAM
  (Hourly) PM2.5 Speciation (filters analyzed in
  laboratory)
• Ozonesondes (profile up to 30 km 3/day on code
  red days)
• University of Maryland RAMMPP Aircraft
• HU research instrument
• QCM (impactor) Mass fractionated sampling
• Climet (laser particle counter)
  Size-fractionated number densities from 0.3 to 25
  mm in seven size bins

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Raman Lidar Profiling of Aerosol and Water
Vapor

• Completed Raman Lidar. The system has met or
  exceeded all initial design criteria
• Three-channel
• Measure water vapor mixing ratios, aerosol
  backscatter coefficients, and cirrus clouds
  thicknesses.
• Preliminary results show good qualitative
  agreement with data obtained from radiosonde
  measurements for water vapor

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Research Examples
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Water Vapor Lidar Intercomparison within the
context of NDSC and AURA Validation
GSFC/Scanning Raman Lidar

• Purposes
• AURA water vapor profile validation
• Cal/Val of Raman lidar water vapor profiles
• NASA/GSFC Scanning Raman Lidar (Whiteman) and
  Aerosol/Temperature Lidar (McGee)
• Howard University Raman Lidar (Venable)
• Radiosonde intercomparison study
• Experiment Design
• Time Sept December, 2005
• Location HU Beltsville Research Site
• Instruments Raman Lidars, Vaisala RS92,
  Intermet, Microwave Radiometer, GPS

Howard Raman Lidar
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Cloud Optical Properties
Cloud optical depth and effective radius from
diffuse solar irradiance MWR using Min and
Harrison, 1996 Min et al, 2003
algorithms. Lookup table for cloud optical
depth cloud Re LWP/CLD-Tau Comparison with in
situ observations from the Citation during ARESE
II Millimeter-wave cloud radar
reflectivity Inferred cloud optical
depth Inferred cloud re Re from in situ
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Inferred Cirrus and Aerosol Optical Depth On
20000313
Min et al, 2004a Min et al, 2004b
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2004 Regional Air Quality Pilot Study GSFC,
UMCP, and MDE

• Ozone Profiles for MD and Washington DC Area
• Profiling of tropospheric ozone during code red
  events
• IONS/INTEX Site
• Summer campaign to study intercontinental ozone
  transport
• INTEX NASA component of summer 2004 ITCT/ICARTT
  experiments.
• Intercomparisons
• TOMS Satellite
• University of Maryland RAMMPP Aircraft

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Instrumentation Workshops(24 26 June 2003, and
21 30 June 2004)

• The principal goals of the workshops were
• Introduce students to and facilitate
  student-interaction with leading atmospheric
  scientist
• Develop both horizontal and vertical mentoring
  strategies with graduate students and
  participating faculty members
• Employ experiential methods of learning as a
  means to motivate students to pursue research and
  careers in atmospheric sciences
• Hand-on application of theories leaned in the
  classroom

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Workshop Participants
31 Participants
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Challenges

• An overall strategy of multi-institutional
  leveraging is being pursued to support Beltsville
  research
• Instrument operation expendables, QA, etc
• Student mentors collaborative research,
  workshops etc
• Onsite technicians

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Beltsville/HU
Summary
UMCP Aircraft sampling Ozone
Challenges Infrastructure cost/improvements
NOAA/NCAS Instrumentation Summer Workshops
NOAA DC-Net
MDE Instrumentations Operations
UMBC REALM
GSFC Raman lidar Precip.
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THE END