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A field study funded by the National Science Foundation on the Great Salt Lake breeze was conducted by University of Utah undergraduate students between October 2008 and September 2009. The goals of the study were to observe and characterize the Great Salt Lake breeze as a function of variations in atmospheric and surface state. The field study consisted of over a dozen undergraduate student volunteers and was primarily conducted in the Tooele Valley, west of Salt Lake City and directly south of the Great Salt Lake. The preexisting network of surface meteorological stations as part of MesoWest were supplemented by five additional stations with high temporal resolution located in specific target regions. A number of rawinsondes were launched on days with lake breezes of particular interest, including days with low background flow ("classic") and those with nonzero southwesterly flow ("opposing synoptic flow"). These soundings provide unprecedented analysis of the vertical structure of medium-size lake breezes in an arid environment under a variety of surface and synoptic forcings. Analysis of field study results is ongoing and will be published here in the future. Also, field project data will be used to validate model simulations of lake breezes as part of the numerical aspects of the National Science Foundation Grant ATM-0802282--"Lake Breeze System of the Great Salt Lake."

October 2008

May 2009

June 2009

July 2009

September 2009

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