The TOGA COARE aircraft mission summaries were produced by the Mesoscale Group, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington in cooperation with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the TOGA COARE International Project Office (TCPIO).
Seven research aircraft were used during the course of TOGA COARE. It is the object of these mission summaries to provide a road map to the data set collected by the aircraft. The mission summaries indicate where and when data were collected, and the larger scale meteorological context for that data. At 30 minute intervals, aircraft flight tracks are superimposed on GMS IR satellite images on a ~7x7 degree scale and additionally aircraft flight tracks are superimposed on a combination of GMS IR satellite data and radar composites from the NOAA WP-3D lower fuselage radars on a scale of ~4x4 degrees.
The main objective of the TOGA COARE aircraft program was to sample the whole spectrum of meteorological conditions over the warm-pool region, undistrubed through distrubed. To this end, it was decided to distribute the turboprop aircraft (WP-3Ds and L-188) research hours evenly over this spectrum.
For the purpose of providing guidance in flight planning, the spectrum of weather present in the experimental domain each hour was partioned into five classes (0-4) according to the contiguous cold cloud-top temperatures. Missions were classified according to the largest area of cold cloud-top temperatures present during the mission.
NCAR Zebra software was used to superimpose and display the diverse data sets used in the mission summaries.