A cable-borne tram for atmospheric measurements along transects

A system to make atmospheric measurements from a moving trolley suspended by a stretched cable has been developed. At present, these measurements consist of wind velocity, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentration, though other sensors may be added. The track consists of cable segments attached to turns mounted on standard triangular towers. Using this approach, the path can be a closed (three dimensional) polygon of arbitrary length. This tool allows continuous, high spatial and temporal resolution sampling in environments, such as within forest canopies, not possible with other platforms. This system was used at the Niwot Ridge AmeriFlux site to obtain insight into the spatial and temporal structure of CO₂, wind, and humidity fields in a natural forest ecosystem. Specifically, cool, moist, and CO₂-rich air was observed to move in thin blobs downslope along the local water drainage through the subcanopy space at night.

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Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license form the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.
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Author Oncley, Steve
Schwenz, Karl
Burns, Sean
Sun, Jielun
Monson, Russell
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2009-03-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:43:51.258371
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:15254
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Oncley, Steve, Schwenz, Karl, Burns, Sean, Sun, Jielun, Monson, Russell. (2009). A cable-borne tram for atmospheric measurements along transects. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7kk9csj. Accessed 22 May 2025.

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