From the Summit Daily News (Nicole Inglish):
The laboratory site, one of three temporary labs at and around Steamboat Ski Area, is part of the Storm Peak Laboratory Cloud Property Validation Experiment, or Stormvex, a Department of Energy-funded project that brings atmospheric scientists such as Shupe from across the country to study liquid, mixed-phase and precipitating clouds. “Understanding clouds is an important part of climate,” Shupe said. “We want to characterize them, give them personality.”[…]
… the study has a larger purpose. Scientists want to understand the physical properties of clouds and their particles and how they fit into a larger global model. “Our ability to predict what’s going to happen in the future depends on our ability to understand the physics,” said Stephen Springston, an aerosol scientist from Long Island in New York. “It requires us to look at these things in great detail.” It began Nov. 15. Instruments outside the barn site, called the valley site, looked to the sky and began recording solar radiation, temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity, light scattering and light absorption. A group of volunteers launches weather balloons with radio transmitters attached into the sky twice a day from the valley site, adding multiple angles to the wealth of data. A second site at the top of Christie Peak Express measures particle concentration, a specialty of Springston’s. A third at the top of the Thunderhead Express pointed lasers and radar into the sky to try to get a vertical profile of the clouds…
Because the Storm Peak Lab is often immersed in clouds, the scientists can validate the data found below with the actual data inside the clouds atop the mountain. “That’s what anchors this whole thing is this validation,” ARM Mobile Facility Site Manager Brad Orr said. “You can put it all together theoretically, but to actually validate that is so important.”