RICO Field Campaign
Model Initialization Data
The Rain In Cumulus over Ocean (RICO) experiment is an NSF-sponsored intensive field campaign to study precipitation formation in small trade wind cumuli, with the overarching goal of enhancing our understanding of the role of trade wind cumuli in the global water and energy cycles.
RICO began with a radar only period from November 24, 2004, to December 6, 2004. Flights and other operations began on December 7. The last day of the campaign was on January 24, 2005. All RICO operations fell within the SPOL radar range. The radar was located on Barbuda at 17.608 N, 61.824 W. The radar range is ~147 km. Satellite data, however, was collected over a larger area. This mattered most for ASTER, where we collected data between 12-22N and 55-65W. Flight operations took place on Antigua.
This case study presents data from 17 Nov 2004 to 24 Jan 2005 and covers a region from 10N to 25N latitude and from 70W to 55W longitude.
6-hourly NCEP Reanalysis data are available here for certain pressure level, surface, and surface flux variables.
- Air temperature, Geopotential height, and U-wind and V-wind data are available at 10, 20, 30, 50, 70, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 850, 925, 1000 mb.
- Relative humidity and Specific humidity data are available at 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 850, 925, 1000 mb.
- Vertical velocity data are available at 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 850, 925, 1000 mb.
- Surface pressure, Sea-level pressure, Surface Temperature, Soil Temperature (0-10 cm), Soil Temperature (10-200 cm), Soil moisture (0-10 cm), and Soil Moisture(10-200 cm) data are available at a single level.
- A land/sea map and surface height map are also available.
You may:
- Read NCEP data README
- Download all NCEP levels and variables in one archive
- Download selected files
- Browse NCEP data for selected levels and variables