Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD)
Millersville University is one of eight institutions participating in a recently funded National Science Foundation - Large Information Technology Research (ITR) Collaborative project called Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD). This $11.25M, 5-year initiative also includes scientists and engineers from the University of Oklahoma, Colorado State University, University of Alabama-Huntsville, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Indiana University, Howard University, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research - Unidata. LEADs mission is to enable an integrated, scalable framework for use in accessing, preparing, assimilating, predicting, managing, mining/analyzing, and displaying a broad array of meteorological and related information, independent of format and physical location. In practical terms, this project will dramatically impact the capability to provide timely warnings of severe weather events by developing the dynamics computing and networking infrastructure required for on-demand detection, simulation and prediction of high impact local weather such as thunderstorms, squall lines, lake-effect snows, and other mesoscale events. A transforming element of LEAD is the dynamic workflow orchestration, which will allow the use of analysis tools, forecast models, and data repositories not in fixed configurations or as static recipients of data, as is now the case, but rather as dynamically adaptive, on-demand systems that can a) change configuration rapidly and automatically in response to the weather; b) continually be steered by new data; c) respond to decision-driven inputs from users; d) initiate other processes automatically; and e) steer remote observing technologies to optimize data collection for the problem at hand.

Drs Sepideh Yalda and Richard Clark of Millersville University will serve as principal investigators responsible for the identification, organization and management of educational testbeds made up of undergraduate students, pre-service teachers, and high and middle school teacher-partners, whose efforts will involve testing, implementing, and integrating the proto-technologies developed by partner institutions into user productivity environments that are scalable and extensible to undergraduate education and research, pre-service science teaching, and high school and middle school science curricula. The input from these user groups will provide feedback that developers will use to refine the technologies. Analysis and visualization tools will be made available to end users via the myLEAD portal, a virtual interface that can be adapted to an end users personal profile/needs. More information on LEAD can be found on the projects main web site at https://portal.leadproject.org. The PIs anticipate that at least 50 Millersville students will be directly involved in LEAD over the project duration, and as many as 20,000 students nationwide could benefit from this technology.

Wintertime Study of Airborne Particles using the Millersville University Tethered Atmospheric Sounding System in Support of MANE-VU
Millersville University (MU) will conduct a field study of aloft and surface airborne particulates in January 2004. Two tethered blimps will be deployed simultaneously, one to conduct vertical profiles of the atmosphere to an altitude of 1000 meters, and the other to obtain 10-hour time series of variables at constant altitude. Dr. Richard Clark was awarded $50K from the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) to conduct this air quality study, believed to be the first wintertime project of its kind. The project will involve 20 undergraduate students, the majority from the meteorology program but also a few chemistry majors too, who will provide the necessary on-site research assistance and post-analysis. Aloft measurements will include air temperature, air pressure, relative humidity/specific humidity, wind speed and direction, aerosol particle concentration, integrated PM2.5 dry mass, and total scattering as a proxy indicator of particulate matter (PM) concentration. A full suite of surface based instruments will monitor the same variables, as well as CO, O3, SO2, and NO/NO2/NOx concentrations and total and backscatter coefficients. Concurrent with the field study, students at Millersville University will be archiving meteorological field variables generated using the new WRF modeling system, observational data and imagery, and back trajectories to later assist in the analysis and interpretation of field observations.

Large-scale Global Atmosphere-Ocean Interactions
Drs. Andrew Muller and Sepi Yalda are investigating the effects of large-scale global atmosphere-ocean interactions on local and regional variability over the period of 1950-present. This study focuses on the various large-scale cycles that can potentially alter and dominate the local and regional temperature and precipitation patterns. This study has been funded by a grant from the Millersville University Environmental Institute/Lancaster Environmental foundation.

M.U. Begins 5-Year Precipitation Monitoring
MU Meteorology has entered into a partnership with the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), the Mercury Deposition Network (MDN), and the PA-Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to monitor the chemical makeup and mercury content in precipitation. Dr Richard Clark and a select group of meteorology and chemistry students have committed to collecting weekly precipitation samples from standardized collection units located about 1.5 miles west of Millersville for a period of at least five years. New students will be brought into the program as others graduate, so that over the lifetime of the project about 30 students will be exposed to the techniques of sampling and chemical analysis of precipitation. Read more.

North-East Corridor Oxidant and Particle Study (NEC-OPS)
Millersville Meteorology is participating in the three-year North-East Corridor Oxidant and Particle Study (NEC-OPS). Along with researchers from Harvard and Penn State, Dr. Richard Clark is leading a group of MU researchers who use our Tethered Balloon to gather air samples up to 1000 feet. More Information.

Southeast Pennsylvania Lightning Climatology
Dr. Alex DeCaria is using data collected from the National Lightning Detection NetworkTM over a seven-year period (1995 - 2001) to construct a preliminary lightning climatology for Lancaster County and Southeastern Pennsylvania. Correlations between lightning strike density and geographic factors are being explored using Geographic Information System technologies.