HARIMAU Radar-Profiler Network over the Indonesian Maritime Continent: A GEOSS Early Achievement for Hydrological Cycle and Disaster Prevention

Abstract

The Hydrometeorological ARray for Isv-Monsoon AUtomonitoring (HARIMAU), a 5-year project under the Japan EOS Promotion Program (JEPP) contributing to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), has begun in 2005 to set up a radar-profiler network for observing the world’s most active convective activities over the Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC). Rainfall and wind distributions are displayed in nearly real time on the internet. Both scientific understanding and practical concepts on intraseasonal variations (ISVs) interacting with larger (seasonal and interannual) and smaller (diurnal or local) scale phenomena will be established. These are expected to contribute greatly and directly to climatic disaster prevention over the IMC and to global climate change assessment through studies on the global effects of the IMC-induced variations such as El Niño, and through construction of the first climatic database over the IMC.