Tropical Western Pacific

The Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) Ocean site began phased operations in 1996 at its first facility on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. The second facility on Nauru Island (Republic of Nauru) was implemented in 1998. In 2002, a third facility in Darwin, Australia was established in collaboration with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to support the other two sites.

In the Pacific, the science focus was on tropical maritime convection and associated cirrus outflow. SGP is convectively active during part of the year, but the tropical atmosphere and the associated convection are inherently different. In addition, tropical phenomena such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation have a strong influence on the global circulation. So understanding the physical processes that affect these phenomena has been critical for improving simulations of global climate.

The Darwin facility operations and data collections officially ended on December 31, 2014. The Manus facility operations and data collections officially ended on August 30, 2014, and the Nauru facility operations and data collections officially ended on August 30, 2013.

Data collected during TWP’s period of operation is available through the ARM Data Center via Data Discovery.