AN OVERVIEW OF THE MOBILE PROFILER SYSTEM - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS FROM FIELD-TESTS DURING THE LOS-ANGELES FREE-RADICAL STUDY

The System Demonstration and Integration Division of the Environmental Technology Laboratory and the Battlefield Environment Directorate of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have designed and built the Mobile P rofiler System (MPS). The MPS is an integrated system of ground-based and satellite-borne remote sensors that measure nearly continuous wind and temperature profiles from the surface up through the troposphere. Ground-based sensors include a 924-MHz phased-array wind and temperat ure profiler, a four-channel microwave radiometer, a surf ace meteorol ogical tower, and a balloon sounding system. Although MPS was initiall y developed for military applications, the nonmilitary environmental a pplications are numerous and significant. This paper provides an overv iew of the instrumentation, software networking, data processing, data integration, and near real-time data display capabilities currently i ncorporated into the MPS. initial results from the first field tests ( Los Angeles Free-Radical Study, 3-24 September 1993) demonstrate the a bility of MPS to observe the complex meteorological structures associa ted with high-pollution events within the Los Angeles Basin.