The 1997 Pan American Climate Studies Tropical Eastern Pacific Process Study. Part II: Stratocumulus region

Abstract

An ad hoc experiment in the marine stratocumulus region to the west of Mexico was conducted from 29 August to 6 September 1997 as part of the Pan American Climate Studies Tropical Eastern Pacific Process Study cruise on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Ronald H. Brown after a medical emergency cut short the planned time in the eastern Pacific ITCZ. The joint variation of cloud structure, drizzle, and tropospheric stratification was documented by a combination of three hourly upper air soundings, scanning C-band radar, hourly cloud photography, and visual observation. The sensitive C-band Doppler radar mounted on the ship was able to obtain observations of drizzle cells with regions of greater than 10 dBZ of 2-3-km scale in the horizontal and peak reflectivities of greater than 25 dBZ.