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Title: The FARM (Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets)
Abstract The Flexible Array of Radars and Mesonets (FARM) Facility is an extensive mobile/quickly-deployable (MQD) multiple-Doppler radar and in-situ instrumentation network. The FARM includes four radars: two 3-cm dual-polarization, dual-frequency (DPDF), Doppler On Wheels DOW6/DOW7, the Rapid-Scan DOW (RSDOW), and a quickly-deployable (QD) DPDF 5-cm COW C-band On Wheels (COW). The FARM includes 3 mobile mesonet (MM) vehicles with 3.5-m masts, an array of rugged QD weather stations (PODNET), QD weather stations deployed on infrastructure such as light/power poles (POLENET), four disdrometers, six MQD upper air sounding systems and a Mobile Operations and Repair Center (MORC). The FARM serves a wide variety of research/educational uses. Components have deployed to >30 projects during 1995-2020 in the USA, Europe, and South America, obtaining pioneering observations of a myriad of small spatial and temporal scale phenomena including tornadoes, hurricanes, lake-effect snow storms, aircraft-affecting turbulence, convection initiation, microbursts, intense precipitation, boundary-layer structures and evolution, airborne hazardous substances, coastal storms, wildfires and wildfire suppression efforts, weather modification effects, and mountain/alpine winds and precipitation. The radars and other FARM systems support innovative educational efforts, deploying >40 times to universities/colleges, providing hands-on access to cutting-edge instrumentation for their students. The FARM provides integrated multiple radar, mesonet, sounding, and related capabilities enabling diverse and robust coordinated sampling of three-dimensional vector winds, precipitation, and thermodynamics increasingly central to a wide range of mesoscale research. Planned innovations include S-band On Wheels NETwork (SOWNET) and Bistatic Adaptable Radar Network (BARN), offering more qualitative improvements to the field project observational paradigm, providing broad, flexible, and inexpensive 10-cm radar coverage and vector windfield measurements.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1661799
PAR ID:
10276243
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
ISSN:
0003-0007
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 88
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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