The new exhibit in the Mesa Lab library, T-Shirts From the Field, features a selection of field project t-shirts from the NCAR Archives.
In order to better understand the atmosphere, researchers use field projects to observe and study a variety of atmospheric phenomena around the globe. Scientists, engineers, software engineers, technical experts, as well as administrative and support staff deploy to a variety of locations to set up instruments and facilities to collect data. Many field projects are interdisciplinary in nature and involve international and inter-agency partnerships. NCAR has participated in over 500 field projects in the last 50 years and many of the early field experiments included a t-shirt worn by participants. This exhibit examines a few of those field projects using the t-shirts as well as photographs and documents from the NCAR Archives.
If you participated in field projects with NCAR and have t-shirts that you would be willing to donate to the NCAR Archives to help complete the collection, please contact the archivist at archives@ucar.edu.
You can learn more about the field projects here. Records and photographs from some of the earliest field projects, like the Line Islands Experiment and the GHOST Balloon program, are available for research in OpenSky.