NOAA Federated Aerosol Network to add two new stations by the end of 2021
The NOAA Federated Aerosol Network (NFAN) is in the process of adding two new stations - one operated by the University of Miami at Ragged Point, Barbados, and one operated by the Air Force Institute of Technology at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Managed by our scientists, the network monitors surface in-situ aerosol properties at field sites around the world. Scattering aerosols can cool the climate through reflecting incident radiation and cloud formation. Absorbing aerosols change temperature profiles in the atmosphere affecting cloud lifetime and precipitation. Monitoring aerosol optical properties helps scientists characterize means, variabilities, and trends of climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols, and understand the factors that control these properties.
Two major contributors to global aerosols are dust from the world’s deserts and smoke from natural and human-caused fires. The new station at Ragged Point is at the eastern tip of the easternmost island of the Caribbean, making it an ideal location to monitor the Saharan dust that is advected across the Atlantic Ocean. The new station at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base complements the existing NFAN stations in the U.S. to monitor anthropogenic and natural aerosols across the continental U.S. Adding these two stations will help us better understand how aerosol particles move across the U.S. and model their impacts on our climate.
The University of Miami already has a station at Ragged Point, Barbados monitoring the chemical and physical properties of the aerosol. A University of Miami nephelometer, an instrument for measuring in situ aerosol optical properties (spectral scattering and backscattering), has been repaired by the Global Monitoring Laboratory. After testing it at the University of Miami, the instrument will be deployed at the Ragged Point site in Barbados. The station is expected to be officially active in the Fall with both the nephelometer and an aerosol light absorption instrument running alongside their existing aerosol instruments.
The station at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base is still at the design stage. The Air Force Institute of Technology has acquired a large shipping container that they will convert into a station. They are currently purchasing the instruments that will be used for aerosol monitoring. As instruments arrive, they will work with Global Monitoring Laboratory scientists to understand instrument operations and data acquisition tools provided by Global Monitoring Laboratory. The goal is to have a station that is at least partially operational by the end of 2021.
Expanding the NOAA Federated Aerosol Network increases the amount of data available to characterize the variability and climate-forcing properties of different types of aerosols and improve models that project future climate. Partners benefit from the technical support and data management software from Global Monitoring Laboratory. It also provides an economic and efficient way for NOAA to expand global observations.
This short paper describes the NFAN and its history and future prospects in more detail: “Andrews et al. (2019) “Overview of the NOAA/ESRL Federated Aerosol Network,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(1), 123-135.