Contact: Barbara McGehan                 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
         Marilu Trainor                  2/25/98

Additional funding to continue research flights into the heart of El Nino-driven storms along the California coast was announced today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the U.S. Commerce Department.

"The flights have provided weather forecasters with significant additional data to assist them in making more specific forecasts," said Elbert W. (Joe) Friday Jr., director of research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The additional funding will help sustain our CALJET mission through the month of March, which should help us better forecast storms that month."

Since mid-January, researchers representing two inter-agency field projects have been collecting data that has helped improve weather forecasts along the California coast and provided more detailed observations for weather models over North America.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Navy and universities participating in the CALJET (California Land-Falling Jets) experiment, using a NOAA P-3 hurricane hunter aircraft, have flown into more than a dozen storms that have pounded communities throughout California in the past six weeks, collecting data that have been put into real-time forecasts by National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters.

At the same time, another group of scientists from NOAA, the U.S. Navy, and the U.S. Air Force, based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Anchorage, Alaska, collected data in real-time which was added to weather models, providing better one- to four-day warnings for recent storms. These research meteorologists were analyzing the formation of the storms out in the Pacific as part of the NORPEX (North Pacific Experiment) project. Together, the two programs have amassed the best data set collected in over a hundred years, according to Friday.

"This has been a very successful effort on the part of these scientists and illustrates the important connection between research and daily operations carried out at NOAA's National Weather Service," said Friday.

"This combination of experiments was designed to see if the addition of measurements over the Pacific Ocean, the birth place of these storms, would improve the forecasts for storms before they hit the West Coast and then move eastward. We also wanted to look at ways to enhance local forecasts of heavy rainfall along the mountainous West Coast of the United States," said William Neff, chief of the division overseeing coastal weather research at NOAA's Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. "I think we've achieved that goal and more."

The NORPEX team has been flying the NOAA Gulfstream-IV jet augmented by two USAF C-130 aircraft from the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Group, Kessler AFB. The flights over the North Pacific provide real-time observations for NWS and Navy numerical models used in weather forecasts. "Our goal was to help improve the skill and reliability of weather forecasts in the one- to four-day time scale by providing additional data gathered from our flights over the Pacific," said Melvyn Shapiro, project coordinator for NORPEX.

The flights along the West Coast were carried out by a NOAA P-3 aircraft, normally used for hurricane research, which along with the G-IV jet is supported and flown by staff from the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in Tampa, Fla.

The CALJET flights were directed into both moderate and strong storms up to one day before they struck the coast. At the same time, trucks with portable Doppler radars traveled up and down the coast taking measurements, while wind profilers, drifting buoys and a host of other instrumentation clicked away, routinely recording data.

"The information gathered was used in real-time weather forecasting and in weather prediction models," said Marty Ralph, principal investigator for CALJET.

This information enabled forecasters in some instances to issue much more specific flood warnings six hours before flooding occurred. The data gathered was also fed into Navy and National Centers for Environmental Prediction weather models in real-time. These data directly aided mesoscale numerical model forecasts by the Naval Postgraduate School, which were run to support CALJET operations and NWS forecasters.

However, the greatest value, said Ralph, may emerge after the data are analyzed back at the lab. "I hope we gain a better understanding of the atmosphere from these projects and forecasters will be able to issue even more timely watches and warnings for the people of California, resulting in better preparedness for weather-related events and the saving of lives and property," said Norm Hoffman, meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS Forecast Office in Monterey.

The data sets gathered by these two projects have led to dramatic improvements in storm forecasting over the past five weeks. The projects worked together, with NORPEX gathering data one to four days out over the Pacific and CALJET gathering data near the coast in the zero-24 hour range. The exceptional research flight data have provided timely information and enhanced the NWS forecasts and flood/wind warnings.

The extreme rains that have fallen in California during the experiments, including more rain in five weeks than normally falls all year, is providing a wealth of data for researchers. This information will help scientists determine the impacts of El Nino on the heavy rains in California, and on exactly how the extra experimental data collected by researchers affected storm forecasts.

According to climate researchers at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, El Nino will continue to impact weather along the West Coast and southeastern United States for the next two months.