UW tests new mobile weather research trailer in Laramie

Incoming weather over Laramie gave the University of Wyoming a live proving ground for a new mobile atmospheric research trailer, and researchers used it for three days in early April to test how it performs in the field.

The mobile atmospheric remote sensing trailer, or MARS trailer, was announced May 1 as the first ground-based test platform for the Department of Atmospheric Science. Built from an unused mobile unit and supported by a $25,000 interdisciplinary seed grant from UW’s Tier-1 Engineering Initiative, the trailer is designed to carry remote sensing instruments wherever weather research is needed.

At its core are two longtime UW tools, the Wyoming cloud radar and the Wyoming cloud lidar. The radar operates at W-band, 94.94 GHz, and can measure high-resolution reflectivity and radial velocity, along with differential reflectivity and linear depolarization ratio. The lidar system includes WCL-I at 355 nm and WCL-II at 351 nm, giving scientists detailed cloud and aerosol structure from the ground instead of only from aircraft. Used together, the instruments can show what is happening inside or beneath clouds with far more detail than a single sensor could provide.

Until now, those systems had mostly been tied to airborne field campaigns through the King Air Atmospheric Research Aircraft facility. UW says the King Air, the Wyoming cloud radar and the Wyoming cloud lidars are available by request on a competitive basis to qualified researchers, and the project archive stretches from 2004 to the present. Moving the equipment onto a trailer expands when and where it can be deployed, adding a new option for collecting data in Wyoming and beyond.

The project also pulled in expertise from outside atmospheric science. Civil engineering professor Noriaki Ohara worked on the effort, and the grant also supported faculty, scientists and a graduate student who helped make the trailer operational. Ohara’s work includes snow hydrology and cold-regions engineering, a fit for a state where wind, snowpack and fast-changing storms shape everything from road conditions to water supply. Project lead Masa Saito, whose research focuses on remote sensing methods for cloud and aerosol properties, said the trailer adds a new ground-based capability for atmospheric science.

The broader Tier-1 Engineering Initiative says its goal is to lift the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences to national prominence while supporting Wyoming’s economic development, and its seed grants are meant to build research areas that can later attract outside funding. In Laramie and across Albany County, where weather extremes are part of daily life, the MARS trailer turns local conditions into a working laboratory for future storm understanding and forecasting.