For more information regarding the PISTON project see: CAMP2Ex project page. As the two projects are closely related and conducted together, PISTON data is available with CAMP2Ex data.
The PISTON field campaign, sponsored by Office of Naval Research, completed two shipboard deployments in the western Pacific north of Palau from early August to mid-October 2018 and September 2019. There were two research vessels involved in PISTON: R/V Thomas G.Thompson in 2018 and R/V Sally Ride in 2019. The second deployment coincided with the CAMP2Ex airborne deployment.
The overarching PISTON science objective is to gain understanding and enhance the prediction capability of multi-scale tropical convection and air-sea interaction in this region. PISTON targeted the Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation (BSISO), which defines the northward and eastward movement of convection associated with equatorial waves, the MJO, tropical cyclones, and the Maritime Continent monsoon during northern-hemispheric (boreal) summertime.
The PISTON shipboard instrument payload includes dual-polarization Doppler radar and multiple vertically-pointing radars and lidars for characterization of cloud and precipitation. Radiosondes were launched for atmospheric profiling. Instruments were also deployed on the ship and towed from the ship to document surface meteorological conditions, air-sea fluxes, and upper-ocean variability.
Two specialized moorings were deployed north of Palau from August 2018 to Oct 2019 to document ocean characteristics beneath typhoons and other tropical weather disturbances. A set of profiling ocean floats were also deployed ahead of typhoons in 2018. A forecast team analyzed and predicted conditions of the weather and ocean throughout the experiment, which were archived for future modeling and observational analysis studies.
For more information on how to use and access PISTON data, please refer to the PISTON User Guide.