Airborne Doppler Radar Investigation of Atmospheric Convection in TOGA COARE

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This grant supports a program of airborne Doppler-radar measurements to study the atmospheric sensible heat and momentum budgets in the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Program's Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE). The primary objective of the research is to obtain better estimates of the magnitudes and vertical profiles of all the terms in the atmospheric sensible heat budget in convectively disturbed regions over the western Pacific warm pool. To achieve this objective, the PIs will take advantage of the fact that the two NOAA P3 aircraft and the NCAR Electra aircraft will be instrumented to obtain dual-doppler radar measurements by means of dual-beam antennas. The aircraft will also be equipped with boundary-layer instruments, cloud microphysical sensors, and radiometers. The PI will use the three aircraft, in conjunction with a ship/island network of sounding systems and surface-based radars, to obtain key information for calculating the terms in the heat and momentum budgets. Terms associated with the synopticscale flow can be estimated from the sounding-system data. Radiation measurements aboard the aircraft will be used to estimate the terms associated with radiative transfer in and out of cloud. Precipitation and boundary-layer measurements made both by the aircraft and by the surface network will provide important constraints and boundary conditions for the calculations. The airborne dual-Doppler radar data will provide key information for calculating the terms in the budgets associated with in-cloud air motions. This research is important because it has the potential to increase understanding of how convection and clouds influence climate on interannual time scales. This project is part of the interagency TOGA COARE program.