NOAA atmospheric baseline observatories provide key data for researchers

Abstract

GREENLAND—Brian Vasel, an admitted “Poley” who has overwintered twice at the South Pole, is drawn to ice sheets. That's a good thing for him: Two of the six atmospheric baseline observatories that he oversees as field operations manager for the Global Monitoring Division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) are located on ice sheets, one at the South Pole and the other at Summit Station, in central Greenland, atop 3.2 kilometers of ice. All of the NOAA atmospheric baseline observatories (ABOs)—including those at Barrow, Alaska; Trinidad Head, Calif.; Mauna Loa, Hawaii; and American Samoa—were strategically selected for their unique locations to conduct a variety of atmospheric and solar measurements. For instance, Summit Station is a high‐latitude, high‐altitude site that is in the free troposphere, and the site in American Samoa is in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Vasel noted.