CIF: Storm Peak Laboratory – Facility for Research and Research Training in Atmospheric Sciences

This Community Instruments and Facilities (CIF) award is for support of the Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL), a mountain-top research station in northwestern Colorado. SPL is a unique, cutting-edge, high-elevation, mid-continental, atmospheric research station. Instruments available at SPL will provide valuable measurements for research focused on aerosol chemical and physical properties; cloud and snow microphysics; atmospheric transformation and transport of mercury; and detection of long-range transported dust and regional wildfire smoke.

NSF funding will provide baseline support to sustain atmospheric measurements, and provide quality-controlled data, including quality assessments, metadata, and supporting ancillary information from existing SPL instrumentation to the broader atmospheric science community. Programs to support education and training are part of the proposed effort. The proposal also includes plans to enhance diversity in the atmospheric and related sciences.

The facility infrastructure and an array of fifteen cutting-edge meteorological instruments at the Storm Peak Laboratory serve as a national resource to advance research and research training in high elevation atmospheric science. The laboratory also fosters interdisciplinary research collaboration by hosting intensive field campaigns and field training courses, providing long term measurements of meteorology, clouds, aerosols, snow hydrology, and atmospheric gases.

This award will enhance the ability of the broader scientific community to use SPL instruments and the laboratory as a research site through the AGS facility request process.

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.