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Sept. 18, 1998: (this is the 17th in a series of stories covering the ongoing CAMEX mission to hunt hurricane data in a way not done since the 50s. Other stories are linked in below.) As the Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX-3) enters its last week, the science and flight teams have been keeping busy with four days of flights during Sept. 13-17. Yesterday, the DC-8 and ER-2 flights provided an excellent study of good convective lines and large stratiform regions. Today and Saturday are no-fly days and Sunday will be an all-day science meeting. Right: Views from the GOES-8 and Meteosat-7 weather satellites show Tropical Storm Georges (arrow) early this morning in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. A closer view of Georges is below. (link to 627x312-pixel, 89KB JPG, top, and 600x400-pixel, 73KB JPG, bottom.) Current satellite images are available through the Global Hydrology and Climate Center's Interactive GOES viewer. From Sunday through Tuesday, the aircraft made one flight for calibration and other tests and two flights for the Texas and Florida Underflight (TEFLUN) campaign supporting the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The Sept. 13 mission was designed to sample atmospheric water vapor in the vicinity of Andros Island, Bahamas during clear sky, nighttime conditions. Humidity information was also collected by Andros Island ground-based instrumentation. This mission was a great success thanks to a pocket of clear sky positioned in the target area throughout the flight period. The TRMM satellite also passed over the area during the mission providing an excellent opportunity to compare the aircraft observations with spaceborne counterparts. The missions flown on Sept. 14-15 were TEFLUN missions flown to sample Florida convection in support of TRMM calibration and validation studies. Only the NASA DC-8 and University of North Dakota Citation were used; the NASA ER-2 could not take off due to significant crosswinds at Patrick Air Force Base. The mission on the 14th sampled developing and decaying oceanic convection east of Cape Canaveral. The mission on the 15th sampled a more widespread area of rain in central Florida west of Cape Canaveral. Both missions were flown within range of radar located west of Melbourne, Fla. The flight legs through the rain were coordinated with scientists monitoring the rainfall activity at the radar. The UND Citation collected microphysical data describing the cloud and rain particle sizes while the DC-8 sampled the rain using remote sensing instrumentation.
CAMEX-3 - the third Convection and Moisture Experiment - is an interagency project to measure hurricane dynamics at high altitude, a method never employed before over Atlantic storms. From this, scientists hope to understand better how hurricanes are powered and to improve the tools they use to predict hurricane intensity. An overview story (Aug. 12, 1998) describes the program in detail. The study is part of NASA's Earth Science enterprise to better understand the total Earth system and the effects of natural and human-induced changes on the global environment. A midterm story (Aug. 31, 1998) reviews the first month of operations and the windfall of data. Because meteorology and aeronautics first used modified nautical charts, their data bases are in nautical miles and knots (nautical miles per hour). In these stories, we use Standard International ("metric") units first, and give more familiar measurements in English units and the original measurements in nautical units. Because of rounding and because the wind speeds originally are expressed in knots, km/h speeds to knots may be slightly different from the numbers in the story.
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Authors: Robbie Hood, Jeff Halversen, and Dave Dooling
Curator: Linda
Porter
NASA Official: Gregory
S. Wilson