The Stony Brook University–Brookhaven National Laboratory Radar Observatory: Facilities, Instrumentation, and Applications

Developed urban and coastal areas such as the Northeastern U.S. are characterized by highly heterogeneous energy sources and landscapes, amplified micro-climate states (e.g., heat waves), and vulnerability to extreme weather associated with snowfall and high winds. Managing infrastructure, energy sector, water resources, air quality, security, transportation and weather and climate in these areas is one of the most important development challenges of the 21st century. Despite its importance, the urban human-environment system is one of the most complex and least understood.

The Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory (SB) Radar Observatory operates continuously 4 fixed observatories in lower Manhattan, Stony Brook, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Southampton in Suffolk County, NY. The selected stations transect the complex urban-coastal environment in an east-west direction. Each fixed observing station includes active lidar and radar observations, surface meteorology and rainfall information. The measurements from these stations provide critical atmospheric measurements such as PBL height, aerosol/smoke profiling, cloud fraction and base height, hydrometeor distribution and type in the atmospheric column and rain/snow amount. The main radar observatory at Stony Brook includes a state-of-the-art scanning dual-polarization Ka-band radar, a profiling W-band radars, microwave radiometer and backscatter lidar observations along with a comprehensive suite of surface observations. The observations from the fixed sites are enhanced by additional observations from our two mobile trucks: i) the BNL “fair-weather” mobile truck that includes a state-of-the-art scanning Doppler lidar, a met station and small and medium size drones capable of performing standard meteorological measurements and ii) the SBU “weather” mobile truck that features a profiling radar, a lidar, a sounding system and a state-of-the-art dual-polarization phased array X-band radar. In addition, the SB Radar group has developed a prototype octocopter drone capable of performing air quality measurements.

Here, the measurement capabilities of the SB Radar Observatory and corresponding examples of measurements conducted over the last two years are presented. The examples include winter storm observations, shallow and deep convective clouds observations using automated tracking algorithms and boundary layer observations in New York City and Long Island.