Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE): Cloud and Rain Characteristics in the Australian Monsoon

The impact of oceanic convection on its environment and the relationship between the characteristics of the convection and the resulting cirrus characteristics is still not understood. An intense airborne measurement campaign combined with an extensive network of ground-based observations is being planned for the region near Darwin, Northern Australia, during January-February, 2006, to address these questions. The Tropical Warm Pool – International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE) will be the first field program in the tropics that attempts to describe the evolution of tropical convection, including the large scale heat, moisture, and momentum budgets, while at the same time obtaining detailed observations of cloud properties and the impact of the clouds on the environment. The emphasis will be on cirrus for the cloud properties component of the experiment. Cirrus clouds are ubiquitous in the tropics and have a large impact on their environment but the properties of these clouds are poorly understood. A crucial product from this experiment will be a dataset suitable to provide the forcing and testing required by cloud-resolving models and parameterizations in global climate models. This dataset will provide the necessary link between cloud properties and the models that are attempting to simulate them. The experiment is a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Commission DG RTD-1.2, and several United States, Australian, Canadian, and European Universities. This experiment will be undertaken over a 4-week period in early 2006. January and February corresponds to the wet phase of the Australia monsoon. This season has been selected because, despite Darwin’s coastal location, the convection that occurs over and near Darwin at this time is largely of maritime origin with a large fetch over water. Based on previous experiments, the convection appears typical of maritime convection with widespread convection that has complex organization, but is not as deep or as intense as continental or coastal convection. Therefore, it is expected that the convection and cloud characteristics will be representative of conditions typical for wide areas of the tropics