CRYSTALFACE

CRYSTAL-FACE

26 June 2002 - 1 August 2002

Lead Scientist: James Mather

Observatory: OSC

From July 3-29, 2002 ARM took part in CRYSTAL-FACE (The Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers -Florida Area Cirrus Experiment). CRYSTAL-FACE was organized by NASA but many agencies and institutions also played roles. The purpose of CRYSTAL-FACE was to study tropical convection and cirrus. Ultimately, there was great interest in carrying out such an experiment in the Tropical Western Pacific and it was likely that a future phase of CRYSTAL would be held in that region. Florida was chosen for the initial phase of CRYSTAL because it offered frequent deep convection and the logistics for holding an experiment there were much simpler than in the equatorial Pacific. Much of the emphasis of CRYSTAL-FACE was on the aircraft component. There were six aircraft that were all based in Key West Florida and flew missions throughout the month over south Florida and on several occasions over the Carribean to study convection in the deep tropics. The aircraft included (in approximate order of maximum ceiling): the Twin Otter, Citation, P3, WB-57, Proteus, and ER-2. The experiment also included extensive satellite and modelling components as well as two fully instrumented ground sites. ARM participated primarily by sponsoring the deployment of PARSL (The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Atmospheric Remote Sensing Laboratory) in southwest Florida. PARSL is a mobile suite of instruments designed to measure the surface radiation budget and the atmospheric state and closely matches the instrumenation found at an ARM site. PARSL instruments included broad and narrowband radiometers, a sky imager, two cloud radars (94 and 35 GHz), a cloud lidar, surface meteorology sensors and a balloon borne sounding system.