Advancing Science and Services during the 2015/16 El Niño: The NOAA El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign

Dole, Randall M.; Spackman, J. R.; Newman, Matthew; Compo, Gilbert P.; Smith, Catherine A.; Hartten, Leslie M.; Barsugli, J. J.; Webb, Robert S.; Hoerling, Martin P.; Cifelli, Robert; Wolter, Klaus; Barnet, Christopher D.; Gehne, Maria; Gelaro, Ronald; Kiladis, George N.; Abbott, Scott; Akish, Elena; Albers, John R.; Brown, John M.; Cox, Christopher; Darby, Lisa S.; Boer, Gijs de; DeLuisi, Barbara; Dias, Juliana; Dunion, Jason; Eischeid, Jon; Fairall, C. W.; Gambacorta, Antonia; Gorton, Brian K.; Hoell, Andrew; Intrieri, J. M.; Jackson, Daniel; Johnston, Paul E.; Lataitis, Richard J.; Mahoney, Kelly; McCaffrey, Katherine; McColl, H. Alex; Mueller, Michael J.; Murray, D. B.; Neiman, Paul J.; Otto, William D.; Persson, Ola; Quan, Xiao-Wei; Rangwala, Imtiaz; Ray, Andrea J.; Reynolds, David W.; Dellaripa, Emily M. Riley; Rosenlof, Karen H.; Sakaeda, Naoko; Sardeshmukh, Prashant D.; Slivinski, Laura; Smith, Lesley; Solomon, Amy; Swales, Dustin; Tulich, Stefan N.; White, Allen B.; Wick, Gary A.; Winterkorn, Matthew G.; Wolfe, D. E.; Zamora, R. J.

doi:10.1175/bams-d-16-0219.1

Cited by 25 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…SHOUT deployments targeting TCs included the 2015 Hurricanes and 2016 Hurricane Rapid Response (HRR) field campaigns. The third campaign explored the impact of winter storms during February 2016 in partnership with the NOAA El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) experiment (Dole et al 2018).…”

Section: Shout Operations and Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NOAA’s Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) Experiment Observations and Forecast Impacts

Wick

Dunion

Black

et al. 2020

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) project evaluated the ability of observations from high-altitude unmanned aircraft to improve forecasts of high-impact weather events like tropical cyclones or mitigate potential degradation of forecasts in the event of a future gap in satellite coverage. During three field campaigns conducted in 2015 and 2016, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Global Hawk, instrumented with GPS dropwindsondes and remote sensors, flew 15 missions sampling 6 tropical cyclones and 3 winter storms. Missions were designed using novel techniques to target sampling regions where high model forecast uncertainty and a high sensitivity to additional observations existed. Data from the flights were examined in real time by operational forecasters, assimilated in operational weather forecast models, and applied postmission to a broad suite of data impact studies. Results from the analyses spanning different models and assimilation schemes, though limited in number, consistently demonstrate the potential for a positive forecast impact from the observations, both with and without a gap in satellite coverage. The analyses with the then-operational modeling system demonstrated large forecast improvements near 15% for tropical cyclone track at a 72-h lead time when the observations were added to the otherwise complete observing system. While future decisions regarding use of the Global Hawk platform will include budgetary considerations, and more observations are required to enhance statistical significance, the scientific results support the potential merit of the observations. This article provides an overview of the missions flown, observational approach, and highlights from the completed and ongoing data impact studies.

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Section: Shout Operations and Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

NOAA’s Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) Experiment Observations and Forecast Impacts

Wick

Dunion

Black

et al. 2020

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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“…As the 2015/2016 El Niño gathered strength, the NOAA's ESRL/Physical Sciences Division conceived the idea of a rapidly deployed multi-platform field campaign to meet a variety of operational and research goals (Dole et al, 2018). Observations during the ENRR field campaign, which involved many partners in and outside of the NOAA, included almost 10 weeks of surface meteorology from Kiritimati Island and 4 weeks of surface meteorology from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown in the central equatorial Pacific.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Earth System Research Laboratory's (ESRL) Physical Sciences Division (PSD) led the design and implementation of one component, the ENRR field campaign (Dole et al, 2018). Among the many assets put into play were surface meteorological instruments on Kiritimati (pronounced "Christmas") Island and aboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Central-Pacific surface meteorology from the 2016 El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) field campaign

Hartten

Cox

Johnston

et al. 2018

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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, continuous measurements of surface meteorology, sea surface temperature, and downwelling shortwave radiation were made by NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. These were largely done in support of the four to eight radiosondes launched each day as the ship travelled from Hawaii to TAO buoy locations along longitudes 140 and 125 • W and then back to port in San Diego, California. The rapid nature of these remote field deployments led to some specific challenges in addition to those common to many surface data collection efforts. This paper documents the two deployments as well as the steps taken to evaluate and process the data. The results are two multi-week surface meteorology data products and one accompanying set of surface fluxes, all collected in the core of the eastern-central Pacific's extremely warm waters. These data sets, plus metadata, are archived at the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and are free for public access: surface meteorology from Kiritimati Island (https://doi.org/10.7289/V51Z42H4); surface meteorology and some surface fluxes from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown (https://doi.org/10.7289/V5SF2T80; https://doi.org/10.7289/V58050VP).

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“…The files are in the NASA Ames Format for Data Exchange ("NASA-Ames Format") which is written in plain (ascii) text, making it highly portable to differ-ent computers and easily accessible to users who have limited computer resources. Detailed explanations of the format are found in Gaines and Hipskind (1998) and at the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) website (Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 2002). NASA-Ames Format requires certain metadata in various header sections and provides for additional optional headers; we have endeav-ored to take advantage of this aspect to make each file selfdescribing.…”

Section: Data Availability and Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Ship- and island-based soundings from the 2016 El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) field campaign

Hartten

Cox

Johnston

et al. 2018

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. As the 2015/2016 El Niño was gathering strength in late 2015, scientists at the Earth System Research Laboratory's Physical Sciences Division proposed and led the implementation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) Field Campaign. ENRR observations included wind and thermodynamic profiles of the atmosphere over the near-equatorial eastern central Pacific Ocean, many of which were collected from two field sites and transmitted in near-real time for inclusion in global forecasting models. From 26 January to 28 March 2016, twice-daily rawinsonde observations were made from Kiritimati (pronounced Christmas) Island (2.0° N, 157.4° E; call sign CXENRR). From 16 February to 16 March 2016, three to eight radiosondes were launched each day from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown (allocated call sign WTEC) as it travelled southeast from Hawaii to service Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) buoys along longitudes 140 and 125° W and then north to San Diego, California. Both the rapid and remote nature of these deployments created particular difficulties in collecting and disseminating the soundings; these are described together with the methods used to reprocess the data after the field campaign finished. The reprocessed and lightly quality-controlled data have been put into an easy-to-read text format, qualifying them to be termed Level 2 soundings. They are archived and freely available for public access at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in the form of two separate data sets: one consisting of 125 soundings from Kiritimati (https://doi.org/10.7289/V55Q4T5K), the other of 193 soundings from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown (https://doi.org/10.7289/V5X63K15). Of the Kiritimati soundings, 94 % reached the tropopause and 88 % reached 40 hPa, while 89 % of the ship's soundings reached the tropopause and 87 % reached 40 hPa. The soundings captured the repeated advance and retreat of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) at Kiritimati, a variety of marine tropospheric environments encountered by the ship, and lower-stratospheric features of the 2015–2016 QBO (quasi-biennial oscillation), all providing a rich view of the local atmosphere's response to the eastern central Pacific's extremely warm waters during the 2015/16 El Niño.

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Advancing Science and Services during the 2015/16 El Niño: The NOAA El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign

Cited by 25 publications

References 45 publications

NOAA’s Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) Experiment Observations and Forecast Impacts

NOAA’s Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) Experiment Observations and Forecast Impacts

Central-Pacific surface meteorology from the 2016 El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) field campaign

Ship- and island-based soundings from the 2016 El Niño Rapid Response (ENRR) field campaign

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