Click on the video above for an introduction to the SAIL field campaign site by co-investigator Ken Williams.
The Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign is less than two months from starting official operations near Crested Butte, Colorado. The campaign will begin September 1, 2021, and run for 21 months, into June 2023.
In June 2021, the second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) arrived at Gothic Townsite for site construction and instrument installation ahead of SAIL. Overseeing the process are members of the ARM team from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This team recently completed beta testing of AMF2 instrumentation at Los Alamos.
David Inouye from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), which is hosting the AMF2 deployment, and Ken Williams, a SAIL co-investigator working for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, sent in the following photos from the installation.
On June 22, as the last of the AMF2 containers is moved into place at Gothic Townsite, traffic backs up through Gothic and the RMBL site. Hazy air conditions reflect fires in the area and deposition of black carbon aerosols, one of the SAIL campaign’s focuses. Photo is by Inouye; caption details are from Williams.A crane lifts an AMF2 container during site construction. Photo is by Inouye.Over three and a half days, the Gothic AMF2 site went from an empty construction pad to eight cargo containers hosting much of the SAIL instrumentation. In this picture, AMF2 construction is finished for the day and the crane is parked. John Bilberry and David Chu, who are managing the SAIL AMF2 deployment for ARM, stand atop the second container from the left. Bilberry and Chu are from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The diversity of landforms, topography, and vegetation associated with the deployment location in the Elk Mountain range of central Colorado is seen here, including a field of lupine in full bloom and Gothic Mountain in the background. Photo and caption details are from Williams.The ARM Mobile Facility site is seen days later. Photo is by Inouye.
