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THE NERC MST RADAR FACILITY AT ABERYSTWYTH

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The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Mesosphere-Stratosphere-Troposphere (MST) Radar at Aberystwyth:
  • is the UK's most powerful and versatile wind-profiling instrument
  • provides measurements of the vertical as well as the horizontal components of the wind
  • is operated predominantly in the ST mode, covering the approximate altitude range 2 - 20 km at 300 m resolution
  • is operated on a continuous basis, with a cycle time of a few minutes
  • can, under suitable circumstances, provide information about atmospheric stability, turbulence, humidity fields, and precipitation
  • has been making mesospheric observations, i.e. covering the altitude range 56 - 94 km, continually since April 2005
The data products are freely available through the British Atmospheric Data Centre.

The radar site is located at Capel Dewi (52.42°N, 4.01°W), near Aberystwyth in west Wales (UK).

The Facility additionally operates and hosts a number of instruments whose observations complement those made by the MST radar. Other data products include surface measurements of meteorological parameters (i.e. wind-speed and direction, temperature, pressure, humidity, solar radiation and rain rate), cloud base altitudes and sky images.

The Facility is principally funded by:

Link to NERC website The Natural Environment Research Council

with additional support from:

Link to the
	   Met Office website The Met Office

It is managed by:

Link to RAL Space RAL Space (Department) of the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

with collaboration from:

Link to
	  the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences website The Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Manchester
link to Aberystwyth University website The Institute of Mathematics and Physics, Aberystwyth University

Data are made available through:

Link to BADC website The British Atmospheric Data Centre

Page maintained by David Hooper
Last updated 12th February 2013