Laramie High Tidings

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IN THIS ISSUE: Update on the UW King Air 2 • Message from the Dept. Head • Welcome to Prof. Daniel McCoy • The Mullen fire, and air quality • King Air deployments in 2020 • Greenhouse gas emissions from cattle feedlot • News from around UW-DAS • Student news • Alumni news • How to donate to UW-DAS

HIGH TIDINGS

Laramie

ANNUAL NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE

UPDATE ON THE

UW KING AIR 2 The 43-year old University of Wyoming King Air (UWKA) research aircraft (tail number “N2UW”) continues to serve us well, however, we are now only 18 months away from its retirement and replacement. While the pandemic took its toll on large field programs in 2020, the King Air was used in support of several smaller campaigns this year. You can read about them on p.5 of this newsletter. Rest assured that the final year for N2UW will be busy—with 3 large NSF campaigns scheduled between early 2021 and spring 2022. The first, SWEX, a campaign to study ‘Sundowner’ wind storms near Santa Barbara, CA, was originally scheduled for spring of this year, but was postponed and re-scheduled for April/May of 2021. Following that, the

King Air will be based out of Laramie to investigate methane emissions from cattle feedlots during APART. The current schedule calls for the last King Air deployment to be to Barrow, AK, in early 2022. As part of our $15.8 million Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure (MSRI) grant to develop the nextgeneration UW King Air, we recently purchased a low-hour 2013 King Air 350i aircraft (s/n FL-862, pictured below). Following its purchase, the avionics were upgraded to the modern Garmin-1000 system. The aircraft is now at Avcon Industries facilities in Newton, Kansas where it will undergo significant modifications including the installation of the heavyweight landing gear, upgrade to PT-67A engines, and

Find more information and updates at www.atmos.uwyo.edu

AUTUMN 2020

all the necessary ports and structure to support our atmospheric sensors. This aircraft will be more capable than N2UW, with additional ports, larger payload, more power, and longer endurance. We are also working on new versions of our cloud radars, new Raman and Doppler lidars (through collaboration with Prof. Zhien Wang at CU), new trace gas and aerosol capabilities, and a powerful aircraft-toground communication system. The NSF-funded community is looking forward to this aircraft coming into service in 2023. The new aircraft is essential to the strategic vision of the Department of Atmospheric Science to retain national prominence in airborne atmospheric observations, an expertise that uniquely defines us. We believe that the nextgeneration UW King Air will be a resource for the department’s faculty and students, for the state of Wyoming, and for the NSF-funded community for decades to come, in research areas such as air quality, fugitive emissions, wildfires, severe storms, winter weather and cloud processes affecting water availability. Progress with the next-generation UW King Air can be tracked at www.uwyo.edu/atsc/uwka/


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