Cloud monitoring at the Pierre Auger Observatory

THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION.; S. J. SCIUTTO

Rio de Janeiro

Conferencia; 33rd International Cosmic Ray Conference; 2013

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)

Several methods are used to detect night-time cloud cover over the 3000 km2 Pierre Auger Observatory,including lidars and laser sources. Here, we describe two methods. Infrared cloud cameras, installed at eachof the four fluorescence detector sites, detect the presence of cloud within the fields of view of each fluorescencetelescope every 5 minutes. Operating since 2002, an upgrade to improved hardware is underway. Secondly, amethod has been implemented to use GOES-12 and GOES-13 satellites to identify night-time clouds over theObservatory. It has been validated using the Observatory?s Central Laser Facility, which determines cloud coverabove this facility. We develop cloud probability maps for the 3000 km2 of the Observatory twice per hour andwith spatial resolution of 2.4 km by 5.5 km and a database with the cloud probabilities for further analysis.