Education and Outreach using the MicroPulse Differential Absorption Lidars (MPD) and NYSM Profiler Network before, during, and after the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse

The 2024 North American total solar eclipse will carve a path of totality from Texas to New England, providing millions of Americans with the opportunity to directly observe a rare celestial and atmospheric event. This project will capitalize on public fascination with eclipses to conduct an education and outreach-focused observational campaign that will measure the response of the atmosphere to a total solar eclipse. Undergraduate students will participate in a scientific field campaign making use of state-of-the-art profiling instruments, and subsequently analyze those data in a classroom setting. Outreach activities will be conducted with K-12 students and the general public, including weather balloon launches. Total solar eclipses provide a natural experiment to assess what happens to the atmosphere when solar radiation is reduced. To measure the atmospheric response to the 2024 Eclipse, the research team will deploy three MicroPulse Differential Absorption Lidars (MPDs), which can continuously measure temperature and water vapor in the lower atmosphere, and conduct daily weather balloon launches for the entire month of April 2024. The MPDs will be co-located with other advanced atmospheric profiling instruments at three New York State Mesonet (NYSM) sites, two of which are along the path of totality. The primary project objective is to take advantage of this unique field project to train undergraduate students on scientific field campaigns, state-of-art profiling instruments, and subsequent scientific data analysis. The ancillary scientific benefit of the measurements will be to cross-validate the MPD against other instrumentation and determine the optimal mix of profiling instruments that are needed to measure atmospheric temperature and moisture fields. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.