MRI: Acquisition of a Hawaii Statewide Mesonet

The Hawaiian Islands have tremendous climatic variability over a small land area, with complex topography and extreme differences in rainfall and vegetation. Long-term observations of rainfall, temperature, and soil conditions are currently unavailable in many areas of Hawaii that are relevant to atmospheric science, hydrology, and ecosystems science.

Through this Major Research Instrumentation award, the Hawaii Mesonet will be established. A Mesonet (mesoscale network) is a densely located set of observational stations, in this case focusing on surface weather and land observations. The Mesonet will enable a wide variety of scientific studies with relevance to the people of Hawaii and in other topographically diverse regions.

The award has clear societal relevance as evidenced through the partner organizations, such as water and natural resource managers, fire departments, and state and federal organizations. Students and post-doctoral researchers will gain field experience in instrument installation, calibration and maintenance, and data from the Mesonet will be incorporated in classes to expand the impact of the acquisition.

The research team will also work with programs intended to boost the involvement of native Hawaiian students in research.

This Major Research Instrumentation acquisition award is for the deployment of a statewide network of state-of-the-art climate monitoring stations. The Hawaii Mesonet will consist of 84 climate stations with sensors for rainfall, air temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, solar and net radiation, and soil moisture, heat flux and temperature.

The stations will each have a data logger, power supply with solar charging, and data telecom device allowing for real-time data transmission. Three example studies that will be conducted using the Hawaii Mesonet include: 1) Convective initiation in mountainous environments, 2) Identifying critical basin water storage thresholds to enable prediction of high flow extremes in a diverse range of watersheds, and 3) Interactive effects of temperature, moisture, and solar radiation on ecosystem carbon fluxes across diverse ecosystem types and conditions.

This project is jointly funded by the Physical and Dynamic Meteorology (PDM) program, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program.

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.