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Investigating Tropical Cirrus Clouds:
Physical Properties and How They Form
The Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers - Florida Area Cirrus Experiment (CRYSTAL-FACE) is a measurement campaign designed to investigate tropical cirrus cloud physical properties and formation processes. Understanding the production of upper tropospheric cirrus clouds is essential for the successful modeling of the Earth's climate.
Contacts:
Don Anderson, Radiation Sciences Program Manager
202-358-1432
NASA HQ
danders1@hq.nasa.gov
For Additional Contacts:
http://cloud1.arc.nasa.gov/crystalface/people.html
Science Goals:
The CRYSTAL-FACE mission is designed to address several specific science questions related to tropical cirrus clouds. The objectives of the mission are to make progress on these issues using a combination of measurements and modeling.
Infrastructure:
Aircraft will be based at Key West Naval Air Station. Ground-based instruments will be located on the southwest coast of Florida. The primary target region is southern Florida and the surrounding waters where deep convection is known to occur frequently in July. The south Florida region offers extensive assets in the form of radiosondes, Doppler radar and opportunities for surface-based remote sensing.
Aircraft:
Several aircraft will be used for in situ and remote sensing of aerosols, ice crystals, meteorological fields, radiative fluxes, and gas concentrations.
- ER-2 aircraft, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center
- WB-57 aircraft, NASA's Johnson Space Center.
- Proteus aircraft, owned by Northrop Grumman, operated by Scaled Composites, and funded for CRYSTAL-FACE by the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) which is a joint NASA, DoD, NOAA enterprise.
- DeHavilland UV-18A, "Twin Otter" aircraft. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is supporting the Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS) associated with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA to provide the and associated aerosol instruments.
- Cessna Citation II aircraft, University of North Dakota
- P-3 aircraft, Naval Research Lab, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the NCAR ELDORA radar system.
ER-2 Aircraft at 50,000 feet
NASA and other scientists were in Key West looking at cirrus outflow from convection over Southern Florida. This is a picture of
NASA's ER-2 aircraft taken on Saturday (7/13/2002) by a passenger aboard the WB-57F aircraft while flying at 50,000 feet. The two aircraft flew side-by-side to intercompare water vapor and temperature measurements. The plane has a number of instruments from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). In the front of the right pod is Jim Wang's (NASA/GSFC) submillimeter instrument, in the rear of the pod is Gerry Heymsfield's (GSFC) cloud radar. In the nose of the ER-2 aircraft is Gerry's doppler radar. In the unseen left pod is Matt McGill's (GSFC) Cloud Physics Lidar and the MODIS airborne simulator. The instrument underneath the ER-2 is the National Center for Atmospheric Research's dropsonde system that is being run by Jeff Halverson and Matt Boehm.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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NASA's ER-2 aircraft taken on Saturday (7/13/2002) by a passenger aboard the WB-57F aircraft while flying at 50,000 feet. The two aircraft flew side-by-side to intercompare water vapor and temperature measurements. The plane has a number of instruments from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). In the front of the right pod is Jim Wang's (NASA/GSFC) submillimeter instrument, in the rear of the pod is Gerry Heymsfield's (GSFC) cloud radar. In the nose of the ER-2 aircraft is Gerry's doppler radar. In the unseen left pod is Matt McGill's (GSFC) Cloud Physics Lidar and the MODIS airborne simulator. The instrument underneath the ER-2 is the National Center for Atmospheric Research's dropsonde system that is being run by Jeff Halverson and Matt Boehm.
The ER-2 and Proteus aircraft will be flown in the lower stratosphere and used primarily for remote sensing but the ER-2 will also include in situ meteorological and water vapor measurements. The WB-57 will be used for in situ sampling of cirrus anvils, aerosols, gas concentrations, and radiative fluxes in the tropopause region. The Citation will sample the lower portions of the cirrus anvils including measurements closer to the convective source. The Twin Otter will sample aerosols and environmental conditions in the boundary layer region feeding into the convective systems. In addition, the Twin Otter will be the used for measuring radiative fluxes underneath stratiform cirrus anvils. Finally, the P-3 will carry the ELDORA radar system that will characterize the structure and evolution of convective cloud systems.
Ground Sites:
Instrumented sites that include multi-frequency millimeter radar, lidar, and radiometry will be located at two locations. The southwestern site is provided in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). Since convection is anticipated to occur over the Florida peninsula on a regular basis, and the upper level flow is predominantly northeasterly, a site situated on the southwest coast will allow sampling of the cirrus outflow from diurnally forced convection. Also, a site will be located in southeastern Florida where cirrus from maritime disturbances and local convection will be observed. The eastern ground site will also be optimally situated for observing thunderstorm anvils in situations when the flow in the upper troposphere is more southerly or westerly.
Schedule:
The mission will occur during the month of July 2002 in the Florida region. Measurements from ground sites, aircraft, and satellites will be made. The mission will also include extensive modeling efforts. Aircraft will be deployed out of the Key West Naval Air Station.
Web site:
http://cloud1.arc.nasa.gov/crystalface
Organizations Involved in the Mission:
Aerospace Corporation
Arizona State University
Boeing Company
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Computer Sciences Corporation
Droplet Measurement Technologies
Emergent Technology Services, Inc.
Gerber Scientific, Inc.
Hampton University
Harvard University
Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET)
NASA Ames Research Center
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Headquarters
NASA Headquarters / National Institute of Standards and Technology
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA Johnson Space Center
NASA Langley Research Center
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Science Foundation
NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory
NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory
Office of Naval Research
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Particle Metrics, Inc.
Pennsylvania State University
Science Applications International Corporation
Science Systems and Applications, Inc.
Space Physics Research Institute
Spec, Inc.
SpecIR Corporation
Stanford University
Sterling Software
Texas A&M University
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
University of California, San Diego
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Denver
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
University of Maryland, Baltimore County/GEST
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Miami
University of North Dakota
University of Utah
University of Veszprem
University of Wisconsin, Madison
VRCO
Yale University
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