Integrated Sounding System :: ISS

NCAR / EOL is deploying an Integrated Sounding System (ISS) to the ISPA project which consist of a UHF boundary layer wind profiler with RASS, radiosonde sounding system, and surface meteorology tower near the base of Mount Werner.

The ISS measures pressure, tempurature and humidity, wind, radiation and rain. The ISS Balloon-bourne Sounding System is also used on a daily basis during ISPA. Watch a video of and ISPA weather balloon launch.

Mulitple Antenna Profiler Radar :: MAPR

The wind profiler being used for ISPA is the Mulitple Antenna Profiler Radar (MAPR), an advanced radar capable of making very rapid wind measurements and continuous snow observations.

The MAPR is an advanced wind profiler radar being developed at NCAR/EOL to make rapid wind measurements of the boundary layer. The radar was originally based on a Radian (now Vaisala) LAP 3000 915 MHz wind profiler, however has been highly modified. The antenna is divided into 4 vertically pointing sub-arrays for reception and uses Spaced Antenna techniques to measure wind. As the atmosphere moves over the radar, the motion of the atmospheric echoes is tracked over the receivers to make a wind measurement.

A measurement can be made on time scales of 30 seconds to 5 minutes, which is considerably faster than the 10-15 minutes required by traditional DBS wind profilers. MAPR is generally deployed as part of an ISS (Integrated Sounding System). MAPR can also be run in multiple frequency mode to make FDI RIM (Frequency Domain Interferometry Range IMaging) fine range resolution measurements.