Overview of the USCRN research program

The U.S Climate Reference Network (USCRN) is a network of about 100 stations in the United States. One component of the network is the testing, evaluation and performance of the instrumentation presently used by the network and evaluating new technology. The USCRN has a precipitation test bed and temperature and relative humidity field site. These facilities are used to intercompare existing precipitation, temperature and relative humidity measurement systems used by different networks in a controlled environment. Measurement systems currently under study are being used by the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), NOAA Environmental Real-time Observation Network (NERON), USCRN and some mesonetworks. This ongoing research supports the development of transfer functions between systems. It also provides the opportunity to introduce new technology into the test beds and to evaluate how well they compare to existing systems. This paper provides a current overview of this aspect of the USCRN program and describes some of the new technology that is being evaluated for future use.