GAWTEC & YESS-Community Webinar on GHGs and Atmospheric Composition: Rebecca Chewitt-Lucas - EURECA

UREC⁴A, initially a Caribbean-French-German, partnership field study was supported by the World Climate Research Programme Grand Science Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity. This international enterprise’s base of operations was in Barbados from 20 January- 20 February 2020.

This study concentrated on quantifying how cloudiness in shallow cumulus layers responds to changes in the large-scale environment and how shallow clouds affect radiant energy transfer for different forms of convective organization. Cloud and atmospheric properties, and numerical simulations of shallow cumulus cloud regimes by large-eddy simulation, weather prediction and climate models were retrieved.

To ensure the objectives were met, surface based measurements from the Barbados Cloud Observatory; airborne measurements from the German HALO (High Altitude Long Range) and French ATR research aircraft, and ship based measurements from the German R/V Meteor were supplemented by a large number of additional platforms. EUREC⁴A-UK (a UK project),the British Antarctic Survey’s Twin Otter (TO for short) and ground based facilities for aerosol measurements to advance cloud physics studies; EUREC⁴A-OA (the Ocean-Atmosphere component of EUREC⁴A) secured the service of two additional research vessels (the French R/V L’Atalante and the German R/V Maria Sybilla Merian) and various autonomous observing platforms to study ocean processes. The ATOMIC¹ (a parallel running US research project) brought an additional research vessel, the NOAA R/V Ronald H. Brown, assorted autonomous systems, and the NOAAWP-3D Orion coined as Ms Piggy, to help augment studies of air-sea and aerosol-cloud interactions. Further national initiatives funded a large-scale sounding array, the installation of a scanning precipitation radar, the deployment of ship-borne CloudKites, a network of water stable iso-topologue measurements, as well as a rich assortment of asynchronous aerial and seagoing systems, among them fixed-wing aircraft, quad copters, drifters, buoys, gliders, and sail-drones.

There was operational support from the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) personnel and the region’s operational forecasters. CIMH was instrumental in ensuring that all educational outreach projects envisioned by the planning team occurred. Some of the activities such as DLR PoldiRad (A scanning C-band research radar) collection of convective data continued to be staffed by local personnel, even after the field study ended. Regional scientists who took part in the event as project forecasters and observing scientists on the various platforms, initiated collaborations with international scientists on various concepts/topics. The current and potential findings from EUREC⁴A are being explored and promise to substantially advance understanding of the clouds in the trade-winds.