Site visit and science planning meeting take place in April
The Cloud And Precipitation Experiment at Kennaook (CAPE-K) is still 10 months from starting operations, but the first instrument for the campaign is already onsite in northwestern Tasmania.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has loaned an AS-15 automatic radiosonde launcher to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility to use for CAPE-K. This autosonde launcher has been used by the BOM for many years at Woomera, South Australia. The instrument was relocated to the Kennaook/Cape Grim (KCG) CAPE-K site on June 5, 2023.
CAPE-K will operate from April 15, 2024, until September 15, 2025. The ARM mobile observatory currently in Colorado for the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign will be used for CAPE-K. After SAIL operations end in mid-June 2023, the ARM observatory will be packed up and moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico for preparation before shipping to Tasmania.
Heath Powers, who manages the ARM mobile observatory that will be used for CAPE-K, went to Tasmania in April to discuss instruments and siting with the campaign’s principal investigators, Gerald “Jay” Mace from the University of Utah and Roger Marchand from the University of Washington.
Others involved in the site visit included co-principal investigator Ruhi Humphries from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO); Matt Tully from the BOM; and the four full-time staff from the Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, the host site of CAPE-K.
Toward the end of April, CSIRO hosted a CAPE-K science planning meeting in Aspendale, Australia. The two-day hybrid meeting had about 40 registered participants, including virtual attendees.
“We should see a considerable number of users bringing guest instruments to CAPE-K, particularly when the Australian R/V Investigator voyages near the Kennaook/Cape Grim coast in 2025,” says Powers. “KCG is going to get busy!”
More will be shared on CAPE-K preparations as operations draw closer.
# # #ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.