TA-53 Station Description

Alternate Name(s): LANSCE

Measurements:
The TA-53 station consists of a 46-m tower instrumented at three levels for wind and temperature and near-surface instrumentation for measuring temperature, moisture, precipitation, and shortwave irradiance. Wind measurements from this station are used as input to dose calculations for the LANSCE (formerly, LAMPF) facility.

See Table 13.4 in the Meteorological Monitoring Plan for measurement details and Table 13.3 in the same document for definitions of variables.

Data Type Record Begins Record Ends
15-min dataFebruary 8, 1992

(still active)
24-h data February 8, 1992

(still active)

Site Description:
The TA-53 station is located on the Pajarito Plateau in a clearing on one of the Mesitas de Los Alamos. Just north of the station, the terrain drops 120 m into Los Alamos Canyon.  The view of the station, as shown in the above photograph, is looking east-southeast toward the lower portion of Los Alamos Canyon. The beam trench for the linear accelerator is seen in the center of the photograph and the tower is toward the left edge of the photograph. The vegetation surrounding the tower side is mostly pinon and juniper.

Location and Elevation:
Coordinate System x y
NAD 27 State Plane Coordinates (ft) 498898 1771933
UTM, Zone 13 (m) 386814.71 3970067.89
Longitude & Latitude (d, m, s)-106° 15' 13.4" 35° 52' 12.4"

Station elevation is 6990 ft (2131.1 m) above sea level.

The tower is LANL structure no. TA-53-1020, and the datalogger shed is LANL structure no. TA-53-1046.

Data Quality:

General Remarks
Nearly all suspect data have been replaced with an asterisk (*). Occasionally you will see days on which all the 15-min data appear good, but some of the 24-h summary values are missing.  Lightning strikes, momentary power outages, or the need to reload the datalogger program may be the cause. In these cases, you can estimate a 24-h value from the 15-min data.

See Section C.1.b and c of the Meteorological Monitoring Plan for details on sampling and general remarks concerning accuracy.

Qualifying remarks are organized by data type (for example, wind, atmospheric state, etc.), and we use our standard variable names, as defined in Table 13.3 of the Meteorological Monitoring Plan.

Wind Variables
For the most part, all suspect data have been replaced with an asterisk (*). Occasionally you will see days on which all the 15-min data appear good, but some of the 24-h summary values are missing. Lightning strikes, momentary power outages, or the need to reload the datalogger program may be the cause. In these cases, you can estimate a 24-h value from the 15-min data.

See Section C.1.b and c of the Meteorological Monitoring Plan for details on sampling and general remarks concerning accuracy.

Atmospheric State Variables
Occasionally one encounters relative humidity (rh) values exceeding 100%; we recommend changing these values to 100%. Because rh is used in the calculation of the dew point temperature (dewp), there may be instances when dewp > temp.

Precipitation-related Variables
No known problems.

Radiative Energy Variables
During and for some time after periods of snow or frost formation, the dome of the upward looking pyranometer may become snow or ice covered. In such instances the shortwave irradiance (swdn) is diminished. Our editing has not been consistent: In portions of the record we attempted to remove these snow and frost effects and in other portions we decided not to edit. In general, it is difficult to decide when the melting is complete and the signal is back to normal.

As a result of a change in the calibration standard used by the manufacturer, measurements of swdn are 5% too large from the beginning of the record to April 7, 1995 at 1300 MST.