Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/28706
Title: | Forecasting water vapour above the sites of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) | Authors: | TURCHI, ALESSIO MASCIADRI, ELENA Kerber, Florian Martelloni, Gianluca |
Issue Date: | 2019 | Journal: | MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY | Number: | 482 | Issue: | 1 | First Page: | 206 | Abstract: | Water vapour in the atmosphere is the main source of the atmospheric opacity in the infrared and sub-millimetric regimes and its value plays a critical role in observations done with instruments working at these wavelengths on ground-based telescopes. The scheduling of scientific observational programmes with instruments such as the VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared at Cerro Paranal and the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) at Mount Graham would definitely benefit from the ability to forecast the atmospheric water vapour content. In this contribution, we present a study aiming at validating the performance of the non-hydrostatic mesoscale Meso-NH model in reliably predicting precipitable water vapour (PWV) above the two sites. For the VLT case we use, as a reference, measurements done with a Low Humidity and Temperature PROfiling radiometer (LHATPRO) that, since a few years, is operating routinely at the VLT. LHATPRO has been extensively validated on previous studies. We obtain excellent performances on forecasts performed with this model, including for the extremely low values of the PWV (≤1 mm). For the LBTI case, we compare one solar year predictions obtained with the Meso-NH model with satellite estimates again obtaining an excellent agreement. This study represents a further step in validating outputs of atmospheric parameters forecasts from the ALTA Center, an operational and automatic forecast system conceived to support observations at LBT and LBTI. | Acknowledgments: | ALTA Center project is funded by the Large Binocular Telescope Corporation. The authors thank Christian Veillet, Director of the Large Binocular Telescope, for his continued and valuable support given to this research activity. Authors also thank the LBTO staff for their technical support and collaboration. The authors thank the MOSE ESO Board and the Paranal Science Operation Team for their constant support. Part of the numerical simulations has been run on the HPCF cluster of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) using resources from the Project SPITFOT. | URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/28706 | URL: | https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/482/1/206/5113488 https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.11056 |
ISSN: | 0035-8711 | DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/sty2668 | Bibcode ADS: | 2019MNRAS.482..206T | Fulltext: | open |
Appears in Collections: | 1.01 Articoli in rivista |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1809.11056.pdf | Arxiv | 1.19 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
sty2668(3).pdf | PDF editoriale | 1.37 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
Page view(s)
52
checked on Sep 18, 2024
Download(s)
27
checked on Sep 18, 2024
Google ScholarTM
Check
Altmetric
Altmetric
Items in DSpace are published in Open Access, unless otherwise indicated.