Some Results from the 2012 DEVEX (DEath Valley EXperiment)

Early April 2012 a small field experiment in the Death Valley National Park, CA has been conducted. A group of 18 people in the frame of a student excursion from the University of Vienna, Austria, have spent a week carrying out measurements with transportable equipment, e. g. 25 meteorological Microstations. Besides observation campaigns on the salt bed of the dry lake at the Badwater basin (a cross section and a micronet grid with 50 meters spacing), a slope profile up to Telescope Peak (11.000 ft msl), an along-section through a canyon, a profile into and around the Ubehebe Crater has been set up during a clear night. The latter campaign was carried out to study similarities or differences to other related meteorological experiments e. g. the METCRAX at the Meteor Crater in Arizona or the Grünloch Sinkhole in Austria. Besides the size and steepness differences (Meteor Crater 1,1 km diameter, 160 m depth, Ubehebe Crater 0,75 km diameter, 200 m depth, Grünloch 0,5 km diameter, 50 m depth), especially the surrounding terrain seems to play a mayor role. In contrast to the Meteor Crater there is some vegetation in the Ubehebe Crater bottom, which seems to exhibit a certain role in the formation of the shallow inversion at the bottom of the crater. In addition to the large crater also minor secondary craters have been probed at this experiment. The inversions in these shallow small craters have been eroded by the wind system of the surroung terrain. As the experiment was very recently, no thorough evaluation has been carried out yet. Until the Conference more details will be available and be presented.