Aircraft measurements of temperature anomalies associated with tropical waves during NAMMA

Special measurements were made of tropical waves over the far eastern tropical Atlantic during the NASA-AMMA field program during August and September 2006. One objective of this program was to help determine why some waves develop rapidly into tropical storms while most do not. This presentation shows the temperature anomalies associated with the different waves sampled by the dropsonde and flight level data from the NASA DC-8 and also other estimates of the temperature field from in-situ soundings. The analyses will be compared both with operational global analyses and with mesoscale analyses produced by assimilating the aircraft observations with the WRF model.