DYNAmics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) Legacy Data Products

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This award supports the creation of a legacy dataset for data collected during the DYNAmics of the Madden-julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) field campaign. The goal of DYNAMO was to observe the initiation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). The MJO is a large-scale pattern of precipitation and atmospheric circulation that forms in the Indian Ocean and propagates slowly eastward affecting weather and climate across a large portion of the globe. The campaign took place in the Indian Ocean from 1 October 2011 until 9 February 2012 and was a massive undertaking involving ships, aircraft, sounding systems, and an island-based radar "supersite". Several US agencies and international partners were involved, as documented in the abstract for NSF award AGS-1022899. The campaign was a success in that three MJO events occurred during the deployment, of which the first occurred during the Special Observing Period when all the field assets were deployed together. Overall about 10 terabytes of data were collected.Given the success of the campaign and the large investments made in it, a further investment is warranted to enhance the accessibility of the campaign data and facilitate its used by the research community. Three categories of data products will be developed on this award, characterized by the type of instrumentation used to collect the observations: radar-based, aircraft-based, and sounding-based products. A fourth category consists of data products processed in ways consistent with specific interests of the research community, for instance sounding data processed into variables like precipitable water, convective available potential energy, convective inhibition, lifting condensation level, and the level of free convection. The entire collection will be hosted by the Earth Observing Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.This project is somewhat unusual in that the goal is to develop and serve a dataset for the research community, rather than to conducted research to address a scientific hypothesis. Thus all of the effort can be regarded as a broader impact to the research community. It should also be noted that the MJO has a number of societal consequences, as it is a dominant driver of weather in the tropics and also affects on the US. Among other impacts, the MJO influences the number of hurricanes that form in the Gulf of Mexico. Research leading to better representation of the MJO in weather forecasting models is thus desirable. In addition, the data products will facilitate research on tropical convection in general, which will be of value for developing better models to predict weather and make projections of future climate change.