An aerosonde adaptive observing strategy for the North Pacific Ocean

esThe Aerosonde was designed to Australian Bureau of Meteorology specifications to optimise flexibility and economy of operation. The aircraft entered operations in 1999 after a development period of several years. The Mark 2 Aerosonde can operated above 5 km with an endurance of over 30 h, which relates to well over 3000 km range when optimal flight planning is employed. Future developments are expected to increase this performance to 7 km, 50 h and 5000 km, respectively. Full information is available at www.aerosonde.com .

The next stage of the development is aimed at providing a global system of launch-recovery sites with centralised command, as has been successfully tested in Bureau of Meteorology trials in 1998. This presentation will focus on a regional example of this operation: deployment of a fleet of Aerosondes as an adaptive observing system for the North Pacific Ocean. By adaptive observing, we mean the capacity to undertake concentrated observations in regions of specific interest for weather forecasting. This can vary from routine observations in specified locations to reconnaissance of specific weather systems and focussed observations in regions of high error growth in numerical models.

We shall first examine optimal deployment strategies to ensure that the maximum flexibility can be maintained in the observing system. Then we illustrate the capacity by a specific example of adaptive observations in the region west to the dateline in support of forecasting over the conterminous United State