The PRE-Depression Investigation of Cloud-systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) Field Campaign: Roles and Perspectives of Early Career Scientists

The PRE-Depression Investigation of Cloud-systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) field experiment successfully gathered data from four developing and four decaying/non-developing tropical disturbances over the tropical North Atlantic basin between 15 August and 30 September 2010. As described in a forthcoming paper in BAMS (Evans et al. 2011), the invaluable roles played by early career scientists (ECSs) throughout the campaign helped make possible the successful execution of the field program's mission to investigate tropical cyclone formation. ECSs provided critical meteorological information – often obtained from novel ECS-created products – during daily weather briefings that were used by the principal investigators in making mission planning decisions. Once a G-V flight mission was underway, ECSs provided nowcasting support, relaying information that helped the mission scientists to steer clear of potential areas of turbulence aloft. Data from these missions, including dropsonde and GPS water vapor profiler data, were continually obtained, processed, and quality controlled by ECSs. The dropsonde data provided National Hurricane Center forecasters and PREDICT mission scientists with real-time information regarding the characteristics of tropical disturbances. These data and others will serve as the basis for multiple ECS-led research topics over the years to come and are expected to provide new insights into the tropical cyclone formation process. In this presentation, we will focus upon detailing the contributions of ECSs toward the successful completion of PREDICT scientific objectives and highlight examples of selected ECS-led research topics motivated and/or influenced by PREDICT.