Keynote: The Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment (TWPICE)

One of the most comprehensive data sets of tropical cloud systems and their environmental setting and impacts ever sampled has been collected during the Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE) and ACTIVE (Aerosol and Chemical Transport In tropical conVEction) campaign in the area around Darwin, Northern Australia in January and February of 2006. The experiment design utilized permanent observational facilities in Darwin which include a polarimetric weather radar operated by the Australia Bureau of Meteorology and a suite of cloud remote sensing instruments operated by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program. A dense network of observational systems added for the experiment included sea-soar and buoys for ocean observations, two ground based and one airborne cloud radars and lidars, three wind profilers, radiation measurements, two AERI's, a lightning network and a six site balloon-borne sounding network. A fleet of five research aircraft were deployed including two high altitude aircraft for characterizing cloud properties and the atmospheric state, a plane carrying airborne cloud radar and lidar and two aircraft sampling the boundary layer in great detail including fluxes, aerosols and chemistry. An integral factor in the experiment design was to provide boundary conditions and validation data sets for a range of modelling activities and cloud retrieval development.