The New York State Mesonet: Profiler, Snow, and Flux Networks

The New York State (NYS) Mesonet Early Warning Weather Detection System is a new advanced, statewide weather station network that provides unprecedented weather information across the state. This network is the first of its kind in New York and will consist of 125 surface weather stations that will detect weather phenomena across the entire state.  In addition to the standard equipment, subsets of stations will also collect special vertical, snow, and flux data, critical information for many meteorological applications and research.  All data are transmitted in real-time to a central location, where the data are quality controlled and archived, and then disseminated to a variety of users every 5 minutes.

An “enhanced” network of 17 of the 125 sites will be outfitted with LiDARs, microwave profilers, and sun photometers providing wind, temperature, and moisture profiles in the vertical as well as aerosol and PBL depth information.  Another 17 sites will be outfitted with surface energy balance sensors, measuring incoming and outgoing shortwave and longwave radiation, sensible, latent and CO₂ flux, and ground heat flux.  Yet another 20 of the sites will measure snow water equivalent for hydrological applications.  This presentation will review the networks of profilers, flux, and snow sensors, their deployment and data collection strategies.