Description of Atmospheric Conditions at the Pierre Auger Observatory Using Meteorological Measurements and Models

Abstract

Atmospheric conditions at the site of a cosmic ray observatory must be known well for reconstructing observed extensive air showers, especially when measured using the fluorescence technique. For the Pierre Auger Observatory, a sophisticated network of atmospheric monitoring devices has been conceived. Part of this monitoring was a weather balloon program to measure atmospheric state variables above the Observatory. To use the data in reconstructions of air showers, monthly models have been constructed. Scheduled balloon launches were abandoned and replaced with launches triggered by high-energetic air showers as part of a rapid monitoring system. Currently, the balloon launch program is halted and atmospheric data from numerical weather prediction models are used. A description of the balloon measurements, the monthly models as well as the data from the numerical weather prediction are presented.

References in corpus (4)

• Description of Atmospheric Conditions at the Pierre Auger Observatory using the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS)
• Air Fluorescence Relevant for Cosmic-Ray Detection - Summary of the 5th Fluorescence Workshop, El Escorial 2007
• Altitude dependence of fluorescence light emission by extensive air showers
• The impact of the air-fluorescence yield on the reconstructed shower parameters of ultra-high energy cosmic rays

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory
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• Monte Carlo simulation of light scattering in the atmosphere and effect of atmospheric aerosols on the point spread function
• Origin of atmospheric aerosols at the Pierre Auger Observatory using studies of air mass trajectories in South America
• Ramsauer approach for light scattering on non-absorbing spherical particles and application to the Henyey-Greenstein phase function
• Atmospheric multiple scattering of fluorescence light from extensive air showers and effect of the aerosol size on the reconstruction of energy and depth of maximum
• Atmospheric effects in astroparticle physics experiments and the challenge of ever greater precision in measurements
• The Atmospheric Monitoring Strategy for the Cherenkov Telescope Array