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| Convection and Moisture Experiment | |
|---|---|
| Name | Convection and Moisture Experiment |
| Acronym | CAMEx |
| Type | Atmospheric science field campaign |
| Start date | 200?–201? |
| Location | Various tropical and midlatitude sites |
| Leaders | Multiple principal investigators |
| Funding | Multiple agencies and institutions |
Convection and Moisture Experiment The Convection and Moisture Experiment was a coordinated series of atmospheric field campaigns focused on convective processes and moist thermodynamics. It brought together observational platforms, modeling centers, and academic institutions to study cloud dynamics, precipitation, and moisture transport. The program integrated aircraft, radar, satellite, and surface networks to improve understanding of convective initiation, organization, and interaction with larger-scale circulations.
The program assembled research teams from National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Met Office, and Japan Meteorological Agency along with universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Reading, University of Tokyo, Princeton University, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Miami, Colorado State University, University of Colorado Boulder, Texas A&M University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Washington, University of Oklahoma, University of Arizona, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Korea Meteorological Administration, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration personnel. Leadership and advisory roles included scientists affiliated with WMO, American Meteorological Society, European Meteorological Society, Royal Meteorological Society, and World Climate Research Programme.
Primary aims targeted convective initiation, mesoscale organization, convective momentum transport, and moisture fluxes to underpin improvements in predictive systems developed at ECMWF, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Met Office Hadley Centre, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and NCAR. Secondary goals connected process-level understanding to parameterizations used in models such as WRF, GFS, IFS, ICON, COSMO, MPAS, Unified Model, and regional models hosted by JAXA and CSIRO. The initiative sought to test hypotheses from studies by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Platforms included research aircraft operated by NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, NOAA Aircraft Operations Center, NERC, and university fleets such as University of Wyoming King Air flights, equipped with Doppler lidars, dropsondes, and cloud radars from manufacturers and labs associated with Raytheon, Leosphere, Vaisala, Lockheed Martin, and measurement groups at University of Manchester, University of Leeds, ETH Zurich, NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory, and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. Ground assets comprised mobile radars linked to networks like NEXRAD, scanning W-band, X-band and C-band systems developed with contributions from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Fermilab, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Satellite datasets were drawn from platforms such as TRMM, GPM, MODIS, CALIPSO, CloudSat, GOES, Sentinel, MetOp, Himawari, Suomi NPP, and instruments including IMERG and CERES products.
Campaigns were staged in tropical and midlatitude regimes with deployments near Amazon River Basin, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, Eastern Pacific, West African Sahel, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, South China Sea, Maritime Continent, Great Plains, Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean Sea, Tasman Sea, Southern Ocean, Amazonas, Yucatan Peninsula, Florida Peninsula, Oklahoma Panhandle, Darwin, Northern Territory, La Réunion, Cape Verde Islands, Sahara Desert fringe, and coastal stations tied to observatories at Cape Grim, Mauna Loa Observatory, Barrow Observatory, Palmer Station, and Halley Research Station. These sites enabled synergy with long-term programs like ARM Climate Research Facility, FluxNet, GCOS, GEWEX, and SPARC.
Processing pipelines used community tools and frameworks developed by NCAR, NASA Ames Research Center, ECMWF Copernicus Services, European Space Agency, NOAA Climate Program Office, and laboratories at MIT, Stanford University, Caltech, University of Colorado, Princeton University and MPI-M. Methods included variational and ensemble data assimilation borrowed from 4D-Var and Ensemble Kalman Filter implementations used at ECMWF and NCEP, convective-permitting reanalyses, objective radar mosaic algorithms, and machine-learning approaches influenced by work at Google DeepMind, Microsoft Research, Facebook AI Research, and academic groups at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Toronto. Quality control and archiving utilized standards from NASA Earthdata, ESGF, PANGEA, and Zenodo.
Studies revealed moist preconditioning and low-level jet interactions that modulate convective triggering and upscale growth, advancing parameterizations cited in IPCC assessments and influencing operational forecasting at NOAA National Weather Service, Met Éireann, Météo-France, and Japan Meteorological Agency. Results clarified roles of boundary-layer heterogeneity, aerosol–cloud interactions studied in collaboration with CERN-related initiatives, and teleconnections linked to El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Madden–Julian Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole, North Atlantic Oscillation, and Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Improvements fed into extreme rainfall risk estimates used by agencies like World Bank, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, European Commission, and impacted hydrological modeling by groups at USGS and UNEP.
Funding and collaboration involved national agencies and international programs including National Science Foundation, NOAA, NASA, European Commission Horizon 2020, UK Research and Innovation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, ANR, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Australian Research Council, Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences, Swiss National Science Foundation, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and multilateral initiatives coordinated via WMO, IOC UNESCO, GEWEX, GCOS, Future Earth, and regional meteorological services. Academic consortia and industrial partners provided logistical support and instrumentation, enabling broad data sharing and capacity building with universities and research centers worldwide.
Category:Atmospheric science field campaigns