Towards a ceilometer-lidar network in ASOS: Progress, Problems, and Prospects

Following the National Academy Committee report “Observing the Weather and Climate from the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks” and the subsequent Thermodynamic Profiling Technologies workshop (TPT), a strong set of recommendations were put forward for operational lidar network in the US.  This recommended network was part of the existing operational national Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) operated by NWS and FAA. This ASOS network is operational, recently upgraded with low-power profiling lidars (formerly known as ceilometers) and thus the archiving of the profile lidar data was thought of to be the “low hanging fruit” and relatively easily achievable. Subsequent to the TPT recommendation, NOAA – through the NWS Office of Science and Technology (OST) has funded a study to advise the agency on the instruments capability, data structure, and ways of implementing the data archiving. Howard University and UMBC, in collaboration with NWS Sterling Field Support Center has been working investigating the steps needed for implementation and data application to several atmospheric problems. We will report on progress, problems and prospects of this work during the presentation. Example of the data and selected case studies and challenges will be discussed.