The red bar depicts the 40-mile-wide, 700-mile-long warning airspace now under management by Sandia personnel for DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement facilities. The space extends from a northern point of the US highway system to 400 miles short of the North Pole. The monitored space will better ensure the safety of climate and other experiments [...]
Wind-turbine blades pose a unique set of inspection challenges: from very thick and attentive spar-cap structures to porous bond lines, varying core material, and a multitude of manufacturing defects of interest. The need for viable, accurate, nondestructive inspection (NDI) technology becomes more important as the cost per blade—and lost revenue from downtime—grows. Under its Blade [...]
As the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) storage caverns age, the integrity of the cavern wells has emerged as a significant issue, which requires mitigation. SPR has been holding nitrogen on several cavern storage wells since November 2012. Pressure prediction as a function of time for WH117A. Inset shows model predictions during the nitrogen [...]
Research team members prepare the Sierra Unmanned Aerial System for flight from Oliktok Point, Alaska. (Photo by Mark Ivey) Sandians Mark Ivey and Darin Desilets (both in Sandia’s Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences Dept.) were included in a NASA Group Achievement Award “for outstanding achievement in executing the MIZOPEX using multiple classes of unmanned [...]
A new book, Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States (published by Island Press), was released in May 2013. Vince Tidwell (Earth Systems Analysis Dept.) was the lead contributing author for the chapter on “Energy Impacts.” According to the press release, “the book blends the contributions of 120 experts in climate science, economics, [...]
On July 16th, the Sierra, a unique unmanned aerial system (UAS) operated by the NASA Ames Research Center in northern California (learn more), began flights over the Arctic sea ice as part of the MIZOPEX (Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes Experiment) mission. MIZOPEX is an intensive observing campaign that will characterize the ocean surface, [...]
In October 2012, a small flight team including staff from New Mexico State University (NMSU) and Sandia began the first in a series of test flights for the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Facility to evaluate various unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in the frigid Arctic conditions at Oliktok Point, Alaska. For eight days, the team [...]
The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. It’s that time of year again, when we check in to see where the annual Arctic sea ice minimum will end up. We haven’t quite bottomed out at the end of the melt season, yet, but already 2012 has set new records for smallest Arctic sea ice extent and [...]
Sandia National Laboratories station manager Mark Ivey indicates the path of a helium-filled weather balloon as it floats rapidly up from its cradle. The facility is part of DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) climate research program. (Photo: Neal Singer) Mark Ivey—manager for Sandia of the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) climate [...]
Air-quality monitoring can be a tricky business. Gasses may be blown into the sampling site from another area, they may leak out of an air sample before it can be analyzed, or the sampling container itself may introduce compounds, emitted through off-gassing. If samples are being gathered in remote areas, it can also be difficult getting bulky [...]
