VOCALS-Rex Overview

Hello blogsphere,
I started this blog to keep my friends, family, and colleagues updated on what is going on in my life as pertains to a field study I will be taking part in later this year. I will leave November 3rd and return to the U.S. December 5th. The study, VOCALS-Rex, will be looking at ocean-atmosphere interactions in the South Pacific off the coast of Chile. The name VOCALS is a nested acronym, but illustrates well what we are actually looking at. VOCALS-Rex stands for VAMOS Ocean Cloud Atmosphere Land Study - Regional Experiment, while VAMOS stands for Variability in the American Monsoon System. A mouthful, I know. The aspects that my research group is most interested in are the clouds. We will be looking at the marine stratocumulus which form over the region and produce drizzle. These clouds are poorly represented in present global climate models, and better understanding of these clouds will aid in better model parameterizations in the future. Also, having these intense observations of the clouds will allow us to investigate how processes within clouds lead to the formation of precipitation size droplets.


I will be operating the C-Band radar which mounted atop our ship the NOAA Ronald H. Brown (see link below). I will be monitoring any shifts in calibration, so we can correct for these in post-processing. I will be releasing weather balloons every 4 hours. This will give us a better picture of the vertical properties of the atmosphere. I hope I can find someone on board to take at least one of these off my hands each day. Just so I get enough sleep. My last task will be taking cloud photos every hour there is sunlight.


That is it for now. I just wanted to give everyone somewhat of an overview of what I’ll be doing while on this trip. I will be providing personal and professional reflections while preparing for VOCALS, while I’m on ship, and of course, on my journey there.


Our ship: http://www.moc.noaa.gov/rb/
A good overview: http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/vocals/vocals_intro.html&edu=high&portal=vocals


-Jake