Current Projects

Air Quality and Climatology

Climate Change and Air Pollutant Impacts to New England's Rare Alpine Zone
Observatory researchers, in collaboration with the Appalachian Mountain Club and Plymouth State University, are assessing climate and air pollutant trends and their influence on New England's high-elevation alpine ecosystems. Made possible by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this work builds on the Observatory's unique hourly climate record and the deployment of the Mount Washington Regional Mesonet, as well as the AMC's long-term air quality and alpine ecosystem monitoring.

Icing

Ice Accretion in Areas of Complex Terrain
The focus of this project is to study and model the environmental conditions that lead to ice accretion on objects in the vicinity of complex terrain. This will be accomplished by assessing the meteorology and the terrain interactions. We intend to simulate wind regimes and icing conditions by integrating a digital terrain model, a physics-based, energy-balance, land-surface model coupled with a high resolution (<= 1 km grid) mesoscale meteorological model. The integrated model will be validated against weather, wind and icing observations in the cold, complex terrain of the Presidential Range in northern New Hampshire.

Instrument Siting and Operation

Mount Washington Regional Mesonet
Since early in its history the Observatory has operated and maintained equipment for research, testing and environmental monitoring purposes at its facility on the summit and since the late 1990s at a site in Bartlett, N.H. Since the mid-2000s, the Observatory has been developing and deploying a wide network of remote sites that monitor environmental data. This new "Mesonet" includes a vertical transect of the atmostphere at 1,000-foot intervals along the Mt. Washington Auto Road and an assortment of high elevation sites at ski area summits, Appalachian Mountain Club huts and other facilities.

Global Positioning System Integrated Precipitable Water Vapor Instrument
A Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna in a fixed position measures the delay in the reception of signals from a network of GPS satellites in orbit. The analysis of the time delay in the reception of the signals from space can determine the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This surface-based instrument is located in Bartlett, N.H. and delivers data into the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory's Ground-Based GPS Meteorology Network.