SHEBA

Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) is an international research program designed to document and understand the interaction of atmosphere, ice pack, and ocean in the Arctic. It's goal is to provide measurements that will improve the treatment of Arctic climate in global models. Remote sensors will play a major role in obtaining these measurements.

In closely related work, the North Slope of Alaska was chosen as one of the DOE/ARM Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) sites because General Circulation Models have difficulty simulating polar climates and because changes in global climate are likely to be amplified at hight latitudes.

Installation and testing of CART instruments began at Barrow, Alaska in February of 1997. Because the DOE/ARM and the NSF SHEBA programs share many scientific objectives, an agreement exists to operate the ARM instrumentation at the SHEBA ice camp on the Beaufort Sea for a 14 month period starting in September of 1997. The millimeter cloud radar (MMCR) , designed and built by NOAA/ETL, is an integral part of both experiments. In preparation for these projects, the MMCR was run in Barrow, AK, from February to May of 1997. The test demonstrated the MMCR's ability to operate under Arctic conditions.

Weather & Climate Physics Branch

Contacts

Data

Radar, Radiometer and Lidar Data

Instruments