This 2-year project supports an effort to observe and analyze eclipse-driven Stratospheric Gravity Waves (SGWs) using balloon-borne radiosondes during the 2020 total solar eclipse in South America on December 14, 2020. The gathering of upper atmospheric data with high temporal resolution will allow the project team to continue its investigations of SGWs induced by solar eclipses. The main objective of the 2020 campaign is to identify eclipse-driven atmospheric gravity waves in the stratosphere. The project will enable undergraduate students to become immersed in research over the summer of 2020, participate in a two-week field campaign in December, and perform analysis of the radiosonde data following the field campaign. Previous undergraduate students have helped design the project and determine the optimal spatial and temporal resolution for balloon-borne radiosonde data collection. An intensive student training will occur during the summer before the two-week-long event in South America. The final weeks of the undergraduate research will focus on data analysis using wavelet and hodograph methods. Broader impacts will also result from the students' interactions with experts in the field during all the phases of the project: from planning to field work to final data analysis. Such mentoring expands research capabilities, while opening pathways for professional and workforce development by facilitating an invaluable proposal-to-publication experience for the undergraduates involved. Additionally, the University of Montana's Broader Impacts Group (BIG) will provide guidance on some of the project's public dissemination efforts.
The collection of radiosonde data during this 2-year project would enable the project team to investigate the physical processes governing the eclipse-induced SGWs. The radiosonde data serve to fill in the observational gap pertaining to gravity waves, which are a known mechanism of momentum and energy transfer to atmospheric mean flow. The detection probability of SGWs is enhanced with increased temporal resolution prior to the solar eclipse in addition to increased spatial resolution using four different launch sites. Similar to the Montana Space Grant Consortium's (MTSGC) 2019 solar eclipse campaign, a total of 25 balloons will be launched, beginning 24 hours before the totality. The 2020 solar eclipse campaign is designed to have two balloons at various altitudes with at least one of the two balloons in the 25-35 km range every hour starting 12 hours prior to the totality. The balloon launch schedule has been strategically designed to maximize the structure of hourly temporal resolution, with fewer flights the day before the eclipse and increased flights the day of and directly after the eclipse (relative to 2019). The flight frequency during the solar eclipse is increased to every 30 minutes. In addition to high temporal resolution observations, the 2020 solar eclipse campaign will expand the project team's measurements spatially as well. Rather than limit measurements to a single point along the eclipse path, the 2020 solar eclipse campaign will expand the measurements to four sites, thus spanning the continental path of the eclipse from the west coast of Chile to the east coast of Argentina. Each of the four sites will implement the graphical user interface developed by MTSGC to characterize the background atmosphere and detect atmospheric gravity waves using two separate methods. The research and EPO agenda of this project supports the Strategic Goals of the AGS Division in discovery, learning, diversity, and interdisciplinary research.
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.
