NASA's Convective Processes Experiment (CPEX) aircraft field campaign took place in the North Atlantic–Gulf of Mexico–Caribbean Sea region from May 25 to June 25, 2017. CPEX conducted a total of 16 DC-8 missions from May 27 to June 24.
The 16 missions covered a wide range of weather conditions from clear and calm wind, isolated convective cloud systems, to Tropical Storm Cindy (2017). It is the first field campaign that collected airborne observations continually from pre-tropical disturbance in the Caribbean Sea, to tropical depression, and formation of Tropical Storm Cindy in the Gulf of Mexico prior to landfall.
The three main science objectives of CPEX were:
- Improve understanding of convective processes including cloud dynamics, downdrafts, cold pools and thermodynamics during initiation, growth, and dissipation.
- Obtain a comprehensive set of simultaneous wind, temperature, and moisture profiles, using Doppler wind lidar (DAWN), microwave radiometer and sounder (HAMSR/MASC), and GPS dropsondes, conduct a quantitative evaluation of those profiles in the vicinity of scattered and organized deep convection measured by airborne precipitation radar (APR2), in all phases of convective life cycle.
- Improve model representation of convective and boundary layer processes over the tropical oceans using a cloud-resolving, fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model, and assimilate the wind, temperature and humidity profiles into the model.
Cite the Collection
To cite the entire collection, please use the following:
Chen, Shuyi S. and E. J. Zipser. 2017. Convective Process Experiment (CPEX) Field Campaign Collection [indicate subset used]. Data available online from the NASA EOSDIS Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center, Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.A. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/CPEX/DATA101
For more information on citing data archived by NASA's Global Hydrometeorology Resource Center Distributed Active Archive Center (GHRC DAAC), see NASA's data use policy.
General Characteristics
| Projects | CPEX | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | NASA DC-8 | |
| Sensors/Instruments | APR-2, DAWN, HAMSR, MASC, Dropsondes | |
| Parameters | Atmospheric Pressure, Atmospheric Temperature, Atmospheric Water Vapor, Atmospheric Winds, Clouds, Microwave, Precipitation, Radar | |
| Processing level | 1A, 1B, 2 | |
| Formats | ASCII, HDF4, HDF5, netCDF-3 | |
