Preliminary Report on the BOMEX Sea-Air Interaction Program

Abstract

The principal objective of the Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX) was to measure the rate of exchange of the "properties" heat, water substance and momentum between the tropical ocean and atmosphere over a 500-km square. The Sea-Air Interaction Program of BOMEX (called the "Core Experiment") determined the ship and aircraft array configuration and observation schedule during the period from 1 May to 2 July 1969. Intensive and in many cases redundant observations by several methods were made to permit for each property: a) direct measurement of vertical eddy flux of the property in the surface layer of the atmosphere; b) computation of horizontal flux divergence of the property in the lower 600 mb of the atmosphere, integrated over the array area; c) vertical transport of the properties through the top surface of this volume due to the mean vertical velocity; d) local rate of change of the volume integral of the property; and e) internal sources and sinks (i.e. radiation, precipitation, stress). Ranges of spatial resolution from 10 m to 500 km and temporal resolution from milliseconds to days are provided by the various sensor systems. Data reduction and analysis are underway. Preliminary results indicate that the goal of obtaining values of the significant energy transfer rates and conversions, with accuracy and resolution about an order of magnitude better than any previously available, will be attained. If so, a test of available parameterization formulae will be possible even under the relatively constant and uniform conditions over the tropical oceans.

Precipitation Characteristics of Trade Wind Clouds during RICO Derived from Radar, Satellite, and Aircraft Measurements

“…Findings from large field campaigns like the Global Atmospheric Research Program Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE), the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX), the Atlantic Trade Wind Experiment (ATEX), the Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX), and the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) have added to our knowledge of tropical oceanic precipitation from shallow clouds (e.g., Kuettner 1974;Augstein et al 1973;Holland 1970;Webster and Lukas 1992;Albrecht et al 1995). Findings from large field campaigns like the Global Atmospheric Research Program Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE), the Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (ASTEX), the Atlantic Trade Wind Experiment (ATEX), the Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX), and the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) have added to our knowledge of tropical oceanic precipitation from shallow clouds (e.g., Kuettner 1974;Augstein et al 1973;Holland 1970;Webster and Lukas 1992;Albrecht et al 1995).…”

Deep Convection Triggering by Boundary Layer Thermals. Part II: Stochastic Triggering Parameterization for the LMDZ GCM

“…For the ARM Deep and ARM Shallow cases, the arbitrary domain size is S d,Eu 5 6.55 3 10 4 km 2 , consistent with the LES performed by Guichard et al (2004; which is in two dimensions with a domain length of 250 km). For the BOMEX case, the domain size is taken to be close to the field campaign area, which is S d,Bo 5 2.5 3 10 5 km 2 (500 km 3 500 km) according to Holland (1970). In the rest of the paper, these same reference areas will be kept for each of the case studies.…”

The National Hurricane Research Project: 50 Years of Research, Rough Rides, and Name Changes

“…NHRL also continued to improve its computer simulations of mature tropical cyclone circulation (Rosenthal and Koss 1968) and to model tropical cyclogenesis (Rosenthal 1964 (Holland 1970).…”