On september 20TH, the category four hurricane maria made landfall on puerto rico, making IT the most powerful hurricane to HIT the island in almost 90 years. With catastrophic winds of 155 MPH, maria…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Shared Services Center awarded a $163,452.91 grant to the University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras Campus to replace and upgrade infrastructure and instruments at the Cape San Juan Atmospheric Observatory (CSJ) that were destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The CSJ station is part of NASA's AERONET, the World Meteorological Organization's Global Atmosphere Watch program, and NOAA's ESRL Aerosol Network, and provides important aerosol data for satellite algorithm and model evaluation. This grant will allow the University of Puerto Rico to resume critical atmospheric measurement activities at this site. There was no set-aside designation for this award.

On september 20TH, the category four hurricane maria made landfall on puerto rico, making IT the most powerful hurricane to HIT the island in almost 90 years. With catastrophic winds of 155 MPH, maria devastated the island causing severe damages to homes, buildings, agriculture, and infrastructure. The hurricane and its aftermath greatly impacted the research facilities of the atmospheric chemistry and aerosols research laboratory (acar) at the university of puerto rico s RIO piedras campus. Severely affected were acar s two main sampling stations, the cape SAN juan atmospheric observatory (CSJ) in fajardo (about 75% destroyed) and the pico este (PE) cloud station at EL yunque national forest (100% destroyed). CSJ has been continuously operating since 2004; IT is part of NASA s aeronet, a regional station of WMO s GAW program, and part of NOAA s esrl aerosol network. There are also plans to run, starting in 2018, a micro- ?pulse lidar that will be part of NASA s mplnet. The funds requested from NASA gsfc are therefore to replace and upgrade infrastructure and instruments destroyed by hurricane maria at CSJ, as this is a prerequisite for resuming measurements at this location. Resumption of aerosol measurements at CSJ will benefit NASA and the broader scientific community by providing a data set on aerosol chemical, microphysical, and radiative properties in an undersampled part of the globe, which can be used to evaluate satellite aerosol retrieval algorithms and global aerosol models.