Army Research Lab's Meteorological Sensor Array

US Army Research Laboratory’s (ARL) Atmospheric Science Center is developing a Meteorological Sensor Array (MSA) to not only overcome the US Army’s critical microscale observational shortfall, but also to address greater, community-wide needs for high-resolution observational data, state of the art decision aids and applications, and the capability to verify and validate complex sensor development.  Beyond the Army’s functional domain of interest, the MSA will be useful to a much wider community, both within and outside of DoD. In particular, modelers in the Air Force and Navy, as well as modelers with NOAA, NCAR, DOE, USDA, and universities will have access to a source of boundary layer atmospheric data.

The MSA will be a complex of three, 36-tower arrays outfitted with multiple meteorological and ground sensing instrumentation at grid resolutions of 1km and below.  The three proposed locations include one array on the USDA’s Jornada Experimental Range (JER) near Las Cruces, New Mexico and two on White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).  This configuration on both sides of the Organ Mountain Range will examine the diverse meteorological phenomena observed in the area; the close proximity of mountainous, complex terrain is a major area of research in the atmospheric science community and important to future Army capabilities. The development of scientific objectives, the engineering plan, and data and communication management plan will be discussed along with ARL’s new Atmospheric Science Center.