The OASIS Project network for monitoring the surface energy budget

On 1 January 2000 the Oklahoma Atmospheric Surface-layer Instrumentation System (OASIS) Project became operational. The OASIS Project is a $1.7 million dollar NSF-funded enhancement to the Oklahoma Mesonet. In addition to the normal suite of surface and atmospheric observations, the OASIS Project now allows for the entire surface energy budget to be monitored in real-time at 90 of the 114 Mesonet sites. Net radiation and ground heat flux are measured directly, and sensible heat flux is estimated using a profile technique. In addition, surface skin temperature is measured directly using infrared thermometers, and soil water potential is measured at a depth of 5 cm at each of the 90 sites.

In addition to the 90 standard sites, 10 of the 90 sites are designated super sites, where additional net radiation and eddy correlation instrumentation are installed. A four component net radiometer, the CNR1, measures net radiation, and a sonic anemometer and Krypton hygrometer measure the sensible and latent heat flux directly. The suite of super site instrumentation provides a valuable quality assurance check on the standard site instrumentation. All data are averaged and recorded every 5-minutes in real-time across the entire Mesonet system.

Samples of data from both the super and standard sites are shown, and a brief summary of quality assurance routines are discussed. The data set will be used for model validation and satellite verification, and those efforts already underway will be reviewed.