CACTI-AC

CACTI Aerial Campaign

1 November 2018 - 15 December 2018

Lead Scientist: Adam Varble

Observatory: AAF

As part of Cloud, Aerosol, and Complex Terrain Interactions (CACTI), the ARM Aerial Facility Gulfstream-159 (G-1) aircraft will be deployed near the first ARM Mobile Facility (AMF1) location for approximately six weeks—November 1 to December 15, 2018—to support the CACTI science goals. The G-1 flight measurements will provide information on orographic cumulus clouds and deep convective systems. For orographic cumulus clouds, the G-1 measurements will characterize in-cloud dynamics, microphysics, and aerosols, as well as the environmental variability around the clouds focusing on conditions upstream and downstream of clouds at multiple altitudes in the vicinity of the AMF1 site. In situations of significant aerosol heterogeneity, emphasis will be placed on observations in and out of aerosol plumes in the vicinity of the clouds. For deep convective systems, the G-1 measurements will focus on characterizing the environmental conditions that lead to convective initiation and the vertical profiles of environmental properties around the growing deep convection and in adjacent regions that are not initiating deep convection so that the differences in environment can be compared. Convective inflow and free tropospheric properties from the G-1 aircraft will be important for putting AMF1 observations into context and for providing input to numerical simulations.