Capabilities of Kestrel 5000 Instruments as a Flux Tower on Mount Washington

Mount Washington’s elevation and high prominence provides a unique location for weather observations. At 6,288 feet, the summit can be in many layers of the atmosphere throughout the year, including the planetary boundary layer. With frequent and rapid changes in air masses and pressure systems, a flux tower could provide interesting sensible and latent heating observations from different points on the mountain. Kestrel 5000 instruments were tested as an instrument for a possible mobile flux tower. This research advances similar work performed by Mount Washington Observatory summer 2018 interns who used a sling psychrometer, and this new work focuses on vertical fluxes on the observatory deck using the observation tower.

Data were collected by the Kestrel 5000 instrument data from the Kestrels were analyzed to evaluate their accuracy and precision in different atmospheric conditions. The Kestrel data were compared to the Observatory’s regularly-calibrated instruments at the top and bottom of the tower. Data analysis revealed that Kestrels were accurate by NWS standards especially when measuring temperatures producing a minimal variability of 1.38 °C. Kestrels also experienced some outliers when measuring wind producing a variability of 4.48 mph. Outliers were brought upon by the unique conditions experienced on top of the summit, and some physical and human factors also coming into play.