A Preliminary Analysis of the 14 October 2023 Annular Eclipse's Impacts on the Planetary Boundary Layer

The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) is a NASA-funded project with the objective to engage students in a NASA mission-like adventure in data acquisition by studying the impacts of solar eclipses on the atmosphere during both the 2023 and 2024 solar eclipses. As a part of the project for the 2023 eclipse, 19 atmospheric science teams scattered along the path of annularity launched radiosondes hourly starting 24 hours before annularity and ending six hours after. Hourly profiles of temperature, dewpoint, pressure, and wind speed and direction up to ~30,000 m asl were collected. We believe hourly radiosonde launches over 30 hours by 19 teams created the most spatiotemporally-dense dataset of radiosonde profiles ever collected. Additionally, each team had a surface weather station at their launch site collecting surface observations at 2-second intervals of temperature, dewpoint, relative humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction, and solar irradiance. To gather higher temporal resolution data, a super-site of five closely-sited teams was located in Moriarty and Belén, New Mexico. The hourly radiosonde launch times were staggered such that a radiosonde was launched every 12 minutes for the duration of the campaign. In addition, the team had limited drone operations conducting profiles in the lower planetary boundary layer (PBL) to collect thermodynamic and kinematic data during the event.

This presentation will focus on a preliminary analysis of radiosonde and surface weather data collected by the atmospheric science teams during the 14 October 2023 annular solar eclipse with a focus on the planetary boundary layer response as a function of solar irradiance and land surface type. We will present a cross-site comparison of responses using this unique dataset of radiosonde profiles as well as a focus on the PBL response at the New Mexico super-site.