Observations from the NOAA P-3 aircraft during ATOMIC

The Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC), part of the larger experiment known as Elucidating the Role of Clouds-Circulation Coupling in Climate (EUREC4A), was held in the western Atlantic during the period 17 January-11 February 2020. This paper describes observations made during ATOMIC by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Lockheed WP-3D Orion research aircraft based on the island of Barbados. The aircraft obtained 95 h of observations over 11 flights, many of which were coordinated with the NOAA research ship R/V Ronald H. Brown and autonomous platforms deployed from the ship. Each flight contained a mixture of sampling strategies including high-altitude circles with frequent dropsonde deployment to characterize the large-scale environment, slow descents and ascents to measure the distribution of water vapor and its isotopic composition, stacked legs aimed at sampling the microphysical and thermodynamic state of the boundary layer, and offset straight flight legs for observing clouds and the ocean surface with remote sensing instruments and the thermal structure of the ocean with in situ sensors dropped from the plane. The characteristics of the in situ observations, expendable devices, and remote sensing instrumentation are described, as is the processing used in deriving estimates of physical quantities. Data archived at the National Center for Environmental Information include flight-level data such as aircraft navigation and basic thermodynamic information (NOAA Aircraft Operations Center and NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, 2020, https://doi.org/10.25921/7jf5-wv54); high-accuracy measurements of water vapor concentration from an isotope analyzer (National Center for Atmospheric Research, 2020, https://doi.org/10.25921/c5yx-7w29); in situ observations of aerosol, cloud, and precipitation size distributions (Leandro and Chuang, 2020, https://doi.org/10.25921/vwvq-5015); profiles of seawater temperature made with Airborne eXpendable BathyThermographs (AXBTs; NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, 2020a, https://doi.org/10.25921/pe39-sx75); radar reflectivity, Doppler velocity, and spectrum width from a nadir-lookingW-band radar (NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, 2020c, https://doi.org/10.25921/n1hc-dc30); estimates of cloud presence, the cloud-top location, and the cloud-top radar reflectivity and temperature, along with estimates of 10m wind speed obtained from remote sensing instruments operating in the microwave and thermal infrared spectral regions (NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, 2020b, https://doi.org/10.25921/x9q59745); and ocean surface wave characteristics from a Wide Swath Radar Altimeter (Prosensing, Inc., 2020, https://doi.org/10.25921/qm06-qx04). Data are provided as netCDF files following Climate and Forecast conventions.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • opensky@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Library

Resource Type publication
Temporal Range Begin N/A
Temporal Range End N/A
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format PDF
Standardized Resource Format PDF
Asset Size N/A
Legal Constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.


Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email opensky@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library
Distributor N/A
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email opensky@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library

Author Pincus, Robert
Fairall, Chris W.
Bailey, Adriana
Chen, Haonan
Chuang, Patrick Y.
de Boer, Gijs
Feingold, Graham
Henze, Dean
Kalen, Quinn T.
Kazil, Jan
Leandro, Mason
Lundry, Ashley
Moran, Ken
Naeher, Dana A.
Noone, David
Patel, Akshar J.
Pezoa, Sergio
PopStefanija, Ivan
Thompson, Elizabeth J.
Warnecke, James
Zuidema, Paquita
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2021-07-12T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:14:57.714993
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:24581
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Pincus, Robert, Fairall, Chris W., Bailey, Adriana, Chen, Haonan, Chuang, Patrick Y., de Boer, Gijs, Feingold, Graham, Henze, Dean, Kalen, Quinn T., Kazil, Jan, Leandro, Mason, Lundry, Ashley, Moran, Ken, Naeher, Dana A., Noone, David, Patel, Akshar J., Pezoa, Sergio, PopStefanija, Ivan, Thompson, Elizabeth J., Warnecke, James, Zuidema, Paquita. (2021). Observations from the NOAA P-3 aircraft during ATOMIC. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7dv1p95. Accessed 10 July 2025.

Harvest Source