Tuesday, 6 April 1999
It has become increasingly obvious that the influence of Antarctica on the
atmosphere extends well beyond the southern high latitudes. Given the importance of the
Antarctic to the Southern Hemisphere climate system and the lack of detailed observations
above the surface to verify even basic aspects of the atmospheric circulation over the
Antarctic, a field program is being proposed to fill some of the gaps in our understanding
of Antarctic meteorology. The proposed field program is tentatively being called RIME -
the Ross Island regional Meteorology Experiment. The goal is to provide detailed
observations from surface, aircraft, and space based platforms to improve our
understanding of Antarctic atmospheric processes and to provide the observations needed
to develop, test, and verify numerical models for use in the Antarctic. The field campaign
will be based in the Ross Island region, from the United States base at McMurdo Station.
Surface based observational platforms will be deployed on the Ross Ice Shelf and in the
Terra Nova Bay region, while instrumented aircraft missions will extend from the Ross Ice
Shelf (south to Byrd glacier) to the Ross Sea (north to Terra Nova Bay). This presentation
will summarize our plans for this project and will solicit input from others with interest in
Antarctic and Southern Hemisphere meteorology.
![](images/flag.png)
![](images/blue_ribbon.png)