CPEX DAWN WIND PROFILES

During 25 May – 24 June 2017, NASA funded and conducted the Convective Processes Experiment (CPEX) which was based out of Ft. Lauderdale, FL and used a suite of instruments aboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft to investigate convective process and circulations over tropical waters. A main objective of CPEX was to obtain a comprehensive set of temperature, humidity and, particularly, wind observations in the vicinity of scattered and organized deep convection in all phases of the convective life cycle.

The featured instrument of the airborne campaign was NASA’s Doppler Aerosol WiNd (DAWN) lidar but also included dropsondes, the Airborne Second Generation Precipitation Radar (APR-2), the High Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), the Microwave Temperature and Humidity Profiler (MTHP), and the Microwave Atmospheric Sounder for Cubesat (MASC).

In total, the CPEX campaign flew 16 missions over the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and included missions investigating undisturbed conditions, scattered convection, organized convection and the environment of a tropical storm. The DAWN (and Dropsonde) wind measurement collected during CPEX have provided a unique set of wind profiles to be used in analysis and model assimilation and prediction studies.

CPEX also utilized the High Definition Sounding System (HDSS) dropsonde delivery system developed by Yankee Environmental Services to drop almost 300 dropsondes to obtain additional high-resolution vertical wind profiles during most missions. These dropsondes also provided needed calibration/validation for the much newer DAWN measurements.