Photo of the Week: Aurora australis and laser beam

Aurora australis and a laser beam from the High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) at the AWARE climate observatory overlooking McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. The US Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) West Antarctic Radiation Experiment (AWARE), led by Dan Lubin of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, is the most advanced suite of atmospheric science instrumentation ever deployed in Antarctica. For example, reflected returns from this HSRL beam provides detailed information about cloud and aerosol layer microphysics.

En route to the austral summer, Scripps will lead nearly a dozen field projects this year in Antarctica including AWARE.  "We are literally studying everything from the Earth's core  to the edge of the atmosphere, covering solid earth, ice, ocean, biology, engineering, and - perhaps most importantly - interactions among all these systems," said Scripps postdoctoral researcher Matt Siegfried.

Photo courtesy of AWARE Team member Jeff Aquilina, Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Caption information provided by Dan Lubin and Gabrielle Ayres/AWARE.

Related Image Gallery: Photo of the Week 2016