The Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL) was a laboratory in the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with Weather forecasting, forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, Hydrography, charting the seas, ...

(NOAA)/

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) is a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). OAR is also referred to as NOAA Research. NOAA Research is the research and development arm of NOAA and is the driving force beh ...

(OAR). It was originally founded as the Wave Propagation Laboratory (WPL) in 1967 until it became the ETL in 1992.Brown, Rodger A. and Lewis, John M. (2005), BAMS, PATH TO NEXRAD: Doppler Radar Development at the National Severe Storms Laboratory, 86 (10)p 145

/ref>Little, C. Gordon (1991), IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, 33(4), 24-2

/ref> In October 2005, it was merged with five other NOAA labs to form the

Earth System Research Laboratories The Earth System Research Laboratories (ESRL) is an alliance of four NOAA scientific labs, all located in the David Skaggs Research Center on the Department of Commerce campus in Boulder, Colorado. Organized under NOAA's Office of Oceanic and At ...

. ETL developed

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

instrumentation to allow

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...

s and

oceanographers Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its Physical oceanography, physics, Chemical oceanography, chemistry, Biological oceanography, biology, a ...

to peer inside the

Earth's atmosphere The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weathe ...

to diagnose its behavior and study its interaction with

land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

, and

ice Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...

surfaces. ETL's

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

and scientific expertise help NOAA as it seeks to better monitor, observe, understand and describe the atmosphere so as to provide improved forecasts of its future state.

References

External links

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories - Physical Sciences Division
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research {{US-gov-stub