Uncovering Weather Observations from the Atmospheric Nuclear Weapon Effects Testing Era

Historical surface, upper air, and winds aloft observations taken during the atmospheric nuclear weapon effects testing period (1945-1963) were paramount during the time to ensure the safety of the tests which took place at the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Ground. During this period, not only were established U.S. Weather Bureau stations used, but additional temporary stations were established to provide a large network of observations at increased temporal resolution. Today, with a nuclear-test-ban treaty, this data is even more valuable for its use in the validation and verification of nuclear weapon effects codes used within programs supporting nuclear deterrence and efforts to counter weapons of mass destruction essential to the long-term security of the U.S.

This presentation will discuss an ongoing effort to identify weather stations established during testing periods and to locate the associated weather observations. The goals of the project are to provide digitized weather data to the nuclear effects modeling community that recreate the environmental conditions during the testing periods, to understand the data quality and limitations (such as geolocation, limitations of instrumentation, decoding coded weather messages, etc.) and to perform additional calculations (e.g., wind shear, moisture content, atmospheric stability, etc.) that characterize the atmosphere. This effort includes locating manuals on historical instrumentation and weather message decoding from the NOAA Central Library, finding and digitizing available data from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) archive and the Nuclear Testing Archive. In addition to supporting the nuclear effects modeling community, researchers would also like to provide digitized weather data to the NCEI archive.