RIME: an Antarctic field experiment for the 21st century

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.