Supplement to The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment

Abstract

One of the most comprehensive data sets of tropical cloud systems and their environmental setting and impacts ever sampled has been collected during the Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment in the area around Darwin, Northern Australia in January and February of 2006. The experiment design utilized permanent observational facilities in Darwin which include a polarimetric weather radar operated by the Australia Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and a suite of cloud remote sensing instruments operated by the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program. A dense network of observations added for the experiment included ocean observations and a dense balloon-borne sounding network. An integral factor in the design was to provide boundary conditions and validation data sets for a range of modelling activities and cloud retrieval development. A fleet of five research aircraft were deployed including two high altitude aircraft for characterizing cloud properties and the atmospheric state, a plane carrying airborne cloud radar and lidar and two aircraft sampling the boundary layer in great detail including fluxes, aerosols and chemistry.