the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Observations of surface energy fluxes and meteorology in the seasonally snow-covered high-elevation East River Watershed during SPLASH, 2021–2023
Abstract. From autumn 2021 through summer 2023, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and partners conducted the Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere, and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH) campaign in the East River Watershed of Colorado. One objective of SPLASH was to observe the transfer of energy between the atmosphere and the surface, which was done at several locations. Two remote sites were chosen that did not have access to power utilities. These were along the valley floor near the East River in the vicinity of the unincorporated town of Gothic, Colorado. Energy balance measurements were made at these locations using autonomous, single-level flux towers referred to as Atmospheric Surface Flux Stations (ASFS). The ASFS were deployed on 28 September 2021 at the “Kettle Ponds Annex” site and on 12 October 2021 at the “Avery Picnic” site and operated until 19 July and 21 June 2023, respectively. Measurements included basic meteorology; upward and downward longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes, and subsurface conductive flux, each at 1-minute resolution; 3-d winds from a sonic anemometer and H2O/CO2 from an open-path gas analyser, both at 20 Hz from which sensible, latent heat, and CO2 fluxes were derived; and profiles of soil properties in the upper 0.5 m (both sites) and temperature profiles through the snow (at Avery Picnic), each reported between 10 min and 6 hours. For most measurements, uptime was 96 % (Kettle Ponds) and 89 % (Avery Picnic), and collectively 1,184 days of data were obtained between the stations. The purpose of this manuscript is to document the ASFS deployment at SPLASH, the data acquisition and post-processing of measurements, and to serve as a guide for interested users of the data sets, which are archived under the Creative Commons 4.0 Public Domain licensing at Zenodo.
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2024-158', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Oct 2024
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In this manuscript, the authors present and explain the data collected by their Atmospheric Surface Flux Stations (ASFS) during the SPLASH campaign in the East River Watershed in Colorado. They provide thorough background on the surface energy balance which provides sufficient information for understanding the various measurements and data products from ASFS which are described in the remainder of the paper. The authors go into detail on the set up of the sites, the data collection process, and the data processing. Given the information in their manuscript, I was able to easily understand their data sets and believe any scientist could successfully use these data with the guidance of the paper. Additionally, the data sets themselves are high quality, well documented, and sufficiently cleaned/QC’d.
I have a few small recommendations for improvement of the paper:
- In section 5.4, I believe equations 9 and 10 would benefit from a bit more explanation, specifically explaining all parameters in the equations. For example, in equation 9, I was unable to find the meaning of T_s; is this the temperature at the surface? Similarly in equation 10, is z_{soil} the depth of soil? This may be common notation, but if the n+1 and n-1 written as superscripts in the numerator of equation 10 are not exponents (i.e. are these time indexes?), it may be beneficial to explicitly note this.
- In Figures 4b and 4c, the units of the Soil Depth are reported in meters with a range of 50 m, whereas in the manuscripts the soil probe is said to be 0.5 m in length. I believe this discrepancy is a simple typo, but if not, some explanation of how these measurements were taken should be added.
Other minor technical correction: In line 49, SAIL stands for the Surface Atmosphere Integrated field Laboratory, please add the world “field”.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-158-RC1
Data sets
Atmospheric Surface Flux Station #30 measurements (level 1 Raw), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), September 2021-July2023 C. Cox, J. Intrieri, B. Butterworth, G. de Boer, M. Galalgher, J. Hamilton, E. Hulm, S. Morris, J. Osborn, B. Schmatz, and M. Shupe https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10307826
Atmospheric Surface Flux Station #50 measurements (level 1 Raw), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), September 2021-July2023 C. Cox, J. Intrieri, B. Butterworth, G. de Boer, M. Galalgher, J. Hamilton, E. Hulm, S. Morris, J. Osborn, B. Schmatz, and M. Shupe https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10310521
Atmospheric Surface Flux Station #30 measurements (level 2 Processed), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), October 2021-June 2023 C. Cox, M. Gallagher, J. Intrieri, B. Butterworth, T. Meyers, and O. Persson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10313895
Atmospheric Surface Flux Station #50 measurements (level 2 Processed), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), October 2021-June 2023 C. Cox, M. Gallagher, J. Intrieri, B. Butterworth, T. Meyers, and O. Persson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10313364
Continuous snow temperature profiles from the Snow Ice Mass Balance Apparatus (SIMBA) (level 1 Raw), Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH), November 2022-June 2023 C. Cox, M. Gallagher, J. Intrieri, and M. Shupe https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10327410
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