TEFLUN-A: Texas and Florida Underflights Experiment - A

April 1 to May 15, 1998
College Station, TX

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a NASA and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) coordinated mission that launched the TRMM satellite on 28 November 1997 with a unique complement of sensors to remotely observe rainfall throughout the global Tropics. A series of validation experiments, in which MMM participated, were conducted in 1998 and 1999, to obtain surface-based and airborne measurements to complement that obtained with the satellite. TEFLUN-A was the first such experiment and represents the Texas-based portion of the overall TEFLUN effort. The experiment consisted of NASA ER-2 flights, X-pol radar measurements in southeast Houston, the Texas A&M Aggie Doppler radar, rain gauge and disdrometer networks, a vertical profiling radar, and in-situ measurements obtained with a Learjet.

The goal of the experiment was to provide data for intercomparisons with the satellite measurements and to simulate TRMM satellite data by flying over precipitation systems within the experimental domain. The MMM participants worked with and analyzed in-situ measurements of cloud microphysical properties in collaboration with SPEC, Inc. Measurements of the sizes and shapes of ice crystals were collected using two-dimensional optical array probes, the cloud particle imager (CPI) and the high-volume precipitation sampler (HVPS). These data are being analyzed, in conjunction with those collected in the other validation experiments, to give better information on vertical profiles of hydrometeors.

MMM Participants: Andrew Heymsfield (heyms1@ucar.edu); James Dye (dye@ucar.edu); Greg McFarquhar (mcfarq@ucar.edu); Steve Aulenbach (aulenbac@ucar.edu)

Related Web sites:

TEFLUN project: http://cloud1.arc.nasa.gov/teflun/teflun.index.html

TEFLUN-A (Texas A&M): http://www.met.tamu.edu/research/teflun.html

TEFLUN data archive: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/CAMPAIGN_DOCS/TEFLUN/tef lun.html

TEFLUNA NASA page: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov/trmm_office/field_campaigns/teflun/

TRMM home page: http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov