These pictures are from a meteorological observation campaign conducted at Fukui (福井) airport from mid-January until the 6th of February 2003. It was a joint project of the snowfall team of the Image Information Science laboratory of Kanazawa University (the one I work in), River and Environmental Engineering lab of Tokyo University and some other meteorological research institutes. Even NASA was involved, gathering some cloud data using an airplane.
This is a non-scientific viewpoint of the events, presenting some photos that might be interesting for the occasional reader. If you want to get more information about the actual project and research methods, don't hesitate to contact me and I can at least point you to right people if I don't know the answer myself.
Overview of the site - a typical small airport I guess.
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This garage was our base, equipped with luxury items such as a separate heated space, a tv and a horde of laptops to play with.
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The truck with all the equipment arrived - the work begins.
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Building the frame for the video observation space.
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Camera mounts in the observation tunnel, professor Muramoto (村本先生）at the other end.
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Tower from above, snow goes in the pipe and ends up on video in a narrow illuminated gap inside.
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Kanda (神田さん）setting up the wind breaker net.
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Calibrating the video cameras.
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Ceilometer shooting infrared light up the sky and looking if it sees any clouds.
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POSS - Precipitation Occurrence Sensor System (very short range radar).
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Half of the restaurants in the area seemed to be "tonkatsu" (pork cutlet) shops: this was the best one we found.
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Nights were spent in the Fukui University guest house - at least most of them. Snowfall time was busy.
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Launching the first radiosonde (4 launches per day, Tokyo University Group).
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Following the sonde flight at the terminal.
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Fujii (藤井さん) happy at 5 am after figuring out the reason for some lost sondes: faulty cable.
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Radiometers: cool (and expensive) toys measuring temperature, humidity and liquid water content profiles from natural radiation.
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Thomas Pfaff from Tokyo University got a good idea to hang sonde printouts on the wall.
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This balance should have given us the snowfall rate, but due to strong wind most snow never got in.
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Two MRR-2 radars set up for comparison (only one used at a time). Loads of problems with these...
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After two weeks of mostly clear weather and rain we got a good deal of snow too.
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However, there was still plenty of time to play with the camera at night...
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MRR dish after ignoring it for a bit too long. Maybe the optional heater would be a good idea?
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The GPS clock also gathered a nice snowcap.
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Weatherstation and rain/snow gauge. Umm - what does the solar panel data say?
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Copyright Arto Teräs <ajt@iki.fi> 2003.
Redistribution of this document as a whole or any of the pictures individually is permitted in any medium provided this copyright notice is preserved.
Last update 09.02.2003.