A Closer, Even Closer Look at Near-Surface and Surface-Layer Temperature Changes during the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

As part of an overnight science event at Linn-Benton Community College (LBCC) in Albany, Oregon in August 2017, participants from Lane Community College (LCC) also attended the Great American Total Solar Eclipse Festival. LBCC was in the zone of totality for nearly two minutes, while LCC (in Eugene) was only near totality (99%) at best. Two days of science activities were conducted at LBCC for the general public, and several individuals and groups conducted real-time science experiments, including participants from as far away as South America and Australia. This site was the westernmost observational location for totality in the United States, as Oregon’s reputation for fine weather in summer helped convince many eclipse-watchers to congregate here. The festival included many citizen science activities and discussions of new elements of the GLOBE program.

Most participants camped out overnight on the grounds, and our team had established an observation site the previous afternoon to measure below surface, skin, and near-surface temperature observations as well as shelter-height air temperature. We compare our Albany observations with our campus weather station in Eugene, where we also measured insolation. Our station normally reports every 10 min as part of the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP), but we increased our measurement interval to 1 min for this experiment.

The observations we report here are, to our knowledge, illustrative of the steepest near-surface temperature lapse rates and temperature changes over short periods of time thus far reported at any of the American sites, owing in large part to the long period of (typical) summer seasonal drought in the Willamette Valley and very dry atmosphere characterizing August 2017. Other observations of atmospheric phenomena are documented as well, many following protocols established by GLOBE.