The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry Experiment is being planned for summer 2009 in the central United States. Major facilities identified thus far include 2 aircraft, one flying in the mid- and upper troposphere and one flying at low to mid-troposphere heights, Doppler and polarimetric radars, and lightning mapping arrays.
The PIs of DC3 are Mary Barth, Bill Brune, Chris Cantrell and Steve Rutledge. The steering committee has developed the following goals:
1. To quantify the impact of continental, midlatitude convective storm dynamics, multiphase chemistry, lightning, and physics on the transport of chemical constituents to the upper troposphere,
2. To determine the role of anvil dynamics, multiphase chemistry, microphysics, radiation, and electrification on the chemical composition of convective outflow,
3. To determine the effects of convectively-perturbed air masses on ozone and its related chemistry in the midlatitude upper troposphere and lower stratosphere 12-48 hours after the near convection region is sampled, and
4. To contrast the influence of different surface emission rates on the composition of convective outflow.
1. To determine partitioning of reactive halogen and reservoir species in the UTLS
2. To determine the mass fluxes of air and trace gases into and out of the storm, including entrainment (determine fraction of boundary layer air that reaches LS, UT; determine fraction entrained; determine what part of the boundary layer is ingested by the storm; determine quantity of stratospheric ozone entrained into anvil)
3. To improve our understanding of cloud electrification and lightning discharge processes
4. To investigate the role of deep convection in contributing to UT water vapor and in the transport of water vapor into the lowermost stratosphere
5. To connect aerosol and cloud droplet and ice particle number concentrations with convection characteristics and trace gas convective processing
During the 10-12 April 2006 DC3 Planning Workshop, the science program and experimental design of the DC3 experiment will be discussed and revised. In addition, a science team for DC3 will begin to be formed.
The Science Program Overview and the Experimental Design Overview will be submitted by January 2007.