Northern US Season Winding Down, XC Skies Development Spinning Up

As the US starts to transition into late fall and winter, XC Skies can begin to focus on the vast amounts of feedback, comments, and unabashed criticism from the thousands of pilots we interacted with over the course of many competitions and organized flying events.

All comments and conversations have been noted and pilots can expect to see some badly needed improvements to the core of XC Skies. Once these improvements / bug fixes have been made and rolled out, we will start to focus on the new ideas, both obvious and ingenious that so many pilots have contributed.

XC Skies is committed to being a community-based project where pilot input dictates how the soaring forecast project evolves.

As new features are introduced over the next several months, we'll try to keep this blog up to date.

For those deep in the North, don't forget that spring will be here soon enough, and if you can't wait, there is more than 50% of the planet to the south of you where the sun angles are high, and temperatures are warm.

Wyoming cloud streets, post frontal event, Sept 9, 2010.
North of Green River, WY.

Planetary Boundary Layer Notes

Of interest to atmospheric numerical models is determining accurate planetary boundary layer heights (PBLH). See the following for a grundle of resources: http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/aq/pbl/

Determination of the PBLH is key for a variety of reasons.

1. Determine the height at which the lower atmosphere mixes up as influenced by surface parameters (temps, surface fluxes, humidity, etc).

2. Determine aerosol dispersion predictions. Such as pollution transport or stagnation.

Links associated to efforts and resources to understand this are below:

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/aq/pbl/
http://atmo.tamu.edu/class/metr452/models/2001/PBLproject.html

MPLNET: Micropulse Lidar Networks

http://mplnet.gsfc.nasa.gov/

A project to collect micropulse lidar observations for specific areas. These instruments can detect the backscatter of aerosols in a vertical profile from the surface and resolve the evolution of the planetary boundary layer for a single location, among many other functions.

See http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/aq/pbl/graphics/boundaryLayer_M2.JPG as an example of a daily evolution of convective thermals.

Review

So what does all of this research and initiatives mean for pilots? A LOT! Being able to accurately predict the boundary layer depth and the buoyancy characteristics of that layer are, in a nut shell, the "holy grail" of boundary layer meteorology as far as soaring pilots are concerned.