Meso-Nh simulations of the atmospheric flow above the Internal Antarctic Plateau
Franck Lascaux, Elena Masciadri, Susanna Hagelin, Jeffrey A. Stoesz
备注：
12 pages, 4 figures, SPIE 2008 conference
发表信息：
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes II. Edited by Stepp, Larry M.; Gilmozzi, Roberto. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 7012, pp. 70124D-70124D-12 (2008)
Mesoscale model such as Meso-Nh have proven to be highly reliable in reproducing 3D maps of optical turbulence (see Refs. 1, 2, 3, 4) above mid-latitude astronomical sites. These last years ground-based astronomy has been looking towards Antarctica. Especially its summits and the Internal Continental Plateau where the optical turbulence appears to be confined in a shallow layer close to the icy surface. Preliminary measurements have so far indicated pretty good value for the seeing above 30-35 m: 0.36" (see Ref. 5) and 0.27" (see Refs. 6, 7) at Dome C. Site testing campaigns are however extremely expensive, instruments provide only local measurements and atmospheric modelling might represent a step ahead towards the search and selection of astronomical sites thanks to the possibility to reconstruct 3D Cn2 maps over a surface of several kilometers. The Antarctic Plateau represents therefore an important benchmark test to evaluate the possibility to discriminate sites on the same plateau. Our group8 has proven that the analyses from the ECMWF global model do not describe with the required accuracy the antarctic boundary and surface layer in the plateau. A better description could be obtained with a mesoscale meteorological model. In this contribution we present the progress status report of numerical simulations (including the optical turbulence - Cn2) obtained with Meso-Nh above the internal Antarctic Plateau. Among the topic attacked: the influence of different configurations of the model (low and high horizontal resolution), use of the grid-nesting interactive technique, forecasting of the optical turbulence during some winter nights.
The high Antarctic plateau provides exceptional conditions for conducting infrared observations of the cosmos on account of the cold, dry and stable atmosphere above the ice surface. This paper describes the scientific goals behind the first program to examine the time-varying universe in the infrared from Antarctica - the Kunlun Infrared Sky Survey (KISS). This will employ a small (50 cm aperture) telescope to monitor the southern skies in the 2.4um Kdark window from China's Kunlun station at Dome A, on the summit of the Antarctic plateau, through the uninterrupted 4-month period of winter da…
The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led traverse to Dome A in January, 2009. We present here the measurements of sky brightness with the Gattini ultra-large field of view (90 deg x 90 deg) in the photometric B-, V-, and R-bands, cloud cover statistics measured during the 2009 winter season, and an estimate of the sky transparency. A cumulative probability distribution indicates that the darkest 10% of th…
The latest MERRA-2 reanalysis of the modern satellite measurements provides unprecedented uniformity and fidelity for the atmospheric data. In this paper, these data are used to evaluate five sites for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) observations. These include two established sites (South Pole and Chajnantor, Atacama), and three new sites (Ali, Tibet; Dome A, Antarctica; and Summit Camp, Greenland). Atmospheric properties including precipitable water vapor (PWV), sky brightness temperature fluctuations, ice and liquid water paths are derived and compared. Dome A emerges to be the best among those e…
