News & Events
Dr. Hallar was awarded an National Science Foundation ADVANCE award to initiate positive professional relationships, for women in atmospheric science. Learn more here: http://www.ascent.dri.edu
The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the initial deployment of the second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, in 2010 for the Storm Peak Lab Cloud Property Validation Experiment (StormVEx). The already extensive instrument suite at SPL will be augmented with additional state of the art instruments that are typically used for airborne cloud research by the Stratton Park Engineering Corporation (SPEC). SPL and SPEC will collect in situ cloud and precipitation property measurements while the AMF2 operates at a location approximately 2.4 km west and 500 m in elevation during a winter season. For more information please visit: http://www.arm.gov/news/cms/fac-updates/2165
Preliminary sites identified for the StormVEx AMF2
Welcome to the Desert Research Institute's
Storm Peak Laboratory
A Research and Educational Facility for the Atmospheric Sciences
SPL is located at 10,500 ft (3200 m) on Mt. Werner
near Steamboat Springs, CO
(Photo taken by Storm Peak Laboratory founder, Randy Borys, flying above in his airplane.)
High elevation, mountain-top atmospheric research facilities which are readily accessible under all weather conditions are limited in number world wide. Examples of mountaintop facilities include Jungfraujoch (Switzerland), Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii, USA), Elk Mountain Observatory (Wyoming, USA), Mount Washington Observatory (New Hampshire, USA), Mount Zeppelin (Svalbard, Norway), and Sonnblick (Austria). Sites which offer the ability to make time-extended observations of free tropospheric and in-cloud conditions which are not obtainable by airborne sampling platforms, provide valuable information with regard to cloud physics, cloud-aerosol chemistry, and related topics (Hallett, 1996). Remote scientific facilities which are to remain useful must be designed to meet the needs of diverse groups, and evolve over time to meet changing scientific objectives (Currie, 1996). A permanent research laboratory of this type allows study on a recurrent long-term basis, enabling a greater understanding and characterization of the meteorological processes than is available from temporally limited field projects at unfamiliar locations.
A permanent mountain-top facility, Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL), was constructed during the summer of 1995 in the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Colorado (3200 m M.S.L.; 40.455 deg N, -106.744 deg W). Although SPL has been in existence in various forms for more than nineteen years, the new facility is the latest stage of an evolutionary process of providing a practical, easily accessible facility for researchers, teachers and students of all ages and abilities. A clear upwind fetch places the lab in an ideal location from which to conduct studies of the free troposphere.
SPL is operated by the Desert Research Institute (DRI) Division of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS). DRI is a branch of the Nevada System of Higher Education and is committed to continuing research and education programs in the atmospheric sciences.
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