CIF: Community Instruments and Facilities: Mobile and Quickly Deployable Radars

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This Community Instruments and Facilities (CIF) award is for support of the University of Illinois’s mobile and quickly deployable Doppler on Wheels (DOWs), Rapid-Scan DOW, and C-band on Wheels (COW) radar network, collectively termed as the DOWNET. The radar network will provide customizable, flexible, and targeted observations of various types of weather, including severe storms, flooding events, tornadoes, lake-effect snow, fire plumes, orographic precipitation, hurricanes, and coastal winter storms. The DOWNET will be packaged with next generation visualization and field coordination software for the scientific user community. The DOWNET CIF award is for a baseline level of maintenance and operations support to make the radar systems available to a diverse research and education community. The DOWNET system will provide cutting-edge radar to educational institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities through educational proposals. The award will enhance public weather awareness and educational training at local and national levels. DOWNET will support research to improve warnings of high-impact weather events, which will mitigate loss of life and property to weather hazards. Data from DOWNET can also be used to improve representation of critical small-scale processes in weather and climate models. Participation in local and national outreach events and a robust educational program each year of the award will broaden participation from diverse and underserved communities. Additionally, this award will enhance the ability of the broader scientific community to use the radars through the AGS facility request process. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.