Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) Mission

The Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes (TCSP) experiment is the fifth in a series of field research investigations, known as the Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX), sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate to study hurricanes and tropical rain systems. The fifth field campaign is scheduled for July, 2005.

CAMEX was primarily designed to validate satellite measurements of moisture and to create a better understanding of the water cycle, but also places an emphasis upon studies of tropical cyclones. Utilizing NASA expertise in remote sensing, the TCSP tropical cyclone goals are to increase our understanding of tropical storm genesis and intensification, validate remote sensing measurements and improve numerical model studies of hurricanes. TCSP uses instrumented aircraft to not only make strategic observations but also tests the performance of NASA spaceborne sensors in monitoring the short-term impacts and long-term trends of tropical storms and hurricanes.

Four CAMEX field campaigns were completed between 1993 and 2001. The first two provided a performance test bed for new airborne or ground-based instrumentation designed to simulate or complement precipitation and moisture observations made by satellite sensors. The latter two field campaigns incorporated many of the early CAMEX sensors into a larger, more complete collection of remote sensing and in situ devises for a focused investigation of tropical storms, hurricanes, and convection. These experiments, CAMEX-3 and CAMEX-4 were based in Florida in 1998 and 2001 to sample tropical cyclones in the western Atlantic Ocean basin and the Gulf of Mexico while also supporting validation activities for NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).

TCSP will address the understanding and prediction of tropical genesis, intensity, motion, rainfall potential, and landfall impacts by remote and in situ sensing of the three phases of water from spaceborne and airborne platforms. Hurricane formation and behavior is a multi-scale problem: The hurricane vortex is hundreds of miles in horizontal scale, but the eye and eye-wall are tens of miles (mesoscale), and the embedded convective clouds are on the order of one mile (cloud scale). Numerous hurricanes are also heavily influenced by phenomena in their environment that are thousand of miles wide (synoptic scale).

Contacts:

Science Goals:

Synoptic Scale Processes
• What are the roles of environmental vertical wind shear, or a significant change in horizontal winds including wind direction or speed, in tropical cyclone genesis, intensification track and rainfall?
• How does the amount and distribution of moisture contribute to tropical cyclone genesis, intensification, track, and rainfall?
• How do large-scale effects, such as interactions between easterly waves, terrain, upper-level troughs, atmospheric dust layers, and the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), contribute to tropical cyclogenesis and intensity change?
• What are the capabilities and limitations of using spaceborne and airborne information to improve forecasts of tropical cyclone track, intensity, and rainfall?
Mesoscale Processes
• How does a surface circulation develop?
• What controls the timing, location, and intensity of convection and precipitation and how do these processes feed back to the vortex?
• Do radiative processes and cloud-radiation interactions contribute to storm development and intensification?
• How does the warm core of the incipient hurricane develop? How is this development related to deep convection, thermodynamic conditions in the deep troposphere, and the state of the ocean's surface?
Cloud Scale Processes
• How can the representations of hurricane microphysics be improved through the use of in situ and remotely sensed microphysical quantities?
• How can quantitative precipitation forecasts be improved through application or assimilation of remotely sensed microphysical quantities as thermodynamic, and other processes?
• How does the release of latent heat from microphysical processes feedback upon the updraft and downdraft characteristics of hurricanes and their evolution?

Partners: NASA scientists will work in close collaboration with researchers from:

• NOAA's Hurricane Research Division (HRD)
• NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML)
• U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP)
• Many Universities

When:

July 2005

Where:

TCSP will deploy the NASA ER-2 research aircraft from Costa Rica. The NOAA Hurricane Research Division (HRD) will partner with NASA and will also base its two P-3 Hurricane Hunter research aircraft out of Costa Rica for part of the mission. This site will be conducive to addressing many of the science questions that we have posed while significantly improving the opportunities for sampling tropical storm formation scenarios. The eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, on average, experiences more tropical cyclones each season than the Atlantic Ocean.

Links:

For general information and images:

http://camex.msfc.nasa.gov/

For information about NOAA's Hurricane Research Division (HRD):

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd

For information NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML):

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/

For information about the U.S. Weather Research Program (USWRP):

http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/uswrp/