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A Meso-Climatology Study of the High-Resolution Tower Network Over the Florida SpaceportForecasters at the US Air Force 45th Weather Squadron (45 WS) use wind and temperature data from the tower network over the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) to evaluate Launch Commit Criteria and to issue and verify temperature and wind advisories, watches, and warnings for ground operations. The Spaceflight Meteorology Group at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX also uses these data when issuing forecasts for shuttle landings at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility. Systematic biases in these parameters at any of the towers could adversely affect an analysis, forecast, or verification for all of these operations. In addition, substantial geographical variations in temperature and wind speed can occur under specific wind directions. Therefore, the Applied Meteorology Unit (AMU), operated by ENSCO Inc., was tasked to develop a monthly and hourly climatology of temperatures and winds from the tower network, and identify the geographical variation, tower biases, and the magnitude of those biases. This paper presents a sub-set of results from a nine-year climatology of the KSC/CCAFS tower network, highlighting the geographical variations based on location, month, times of day, and specific wind direction regime. Section 2 provides a description of the tower mesonetwork and instrumentation characteristics. Section 3 presents the methodology used to construct the tower climatology including QC methods and data processing. The results of the tower climatology are presented in Section 4 and Section 5 summarizes the paper.
Document ID
20120003424
Acquisition Source
Kennedy Space Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Case, Jonathan L.
(ENSCO, Inc. Cocoa Beach, FL, United States)
Bauman, William H., III
(ENSCO, Inc. Cocoa Beach, FL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
August 1, 2004
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Report/Patent Number
KSC-2004-107
Meeting Information
Meeting: American Meteorological Society 11th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology
Location: Hyannis, MA
Country: United States
Start Date: October 4, 2004
End Date: October 8, 2004
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NAS10-01052
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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