Tropical Storm Chantal (16-20 August 2001)

The goal of this mission was to obtain coordinated multi-level in situ and remotely sensed observations to support the Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (QPE) objectives of CAMEX-4 under t he USWRP. We hoped to sample the precipitation features in the core rainbands at three altitudes and to attempt to focus our remote sensing and in situ precipitation measurement capabilities on any major precipitation feature.

N42RF surveyed the convective features primarily in Chantal's northern and eastern quadrants in the middle troposphere up to approximately 21/0000 UTC, or 1.5 hours before landfall. The flight level center was about 15-25 nmi to the NE of the Air Force's WC-130 aircraft fixes at 5,000 ft. The major convection was 20-30 km NE of the center of circulation. 20 GPS sondes were dropped and 18 with good winds were transmitted GPS -sonde messages were received at NHC. Doppler radar data were collected throughout the mission. The SFMR did not work for this mission.

The NASA DC-8 and ER-2 pattern mirrored that of N42RF except with longer legs to compensate for their faster ground speed. The DC-8 dropped 6 GPS sondes and transmitted them to NCEP.

Storm/ Date	Aircraft (Duration)	Altitude	Experiment/ Pattern	Comments (expendables)
Chantal
20 August	N42RF (8.9 h) mission summary(2.3 Mb) one minute listing GPS dropsondes DC-8 (7 h) mission summary GPS dropsondes ER-2 (7 h) WC-130	14 kft 37-39 kft 65 kft 1500 ft	3-plane QPE Experiment. N42RF, ER-2 and DC-8 within 150 nm radius in core. AFRES recon.	Chantal Tropical Storm during mission. (18 AXBT, 24 GPS sondes)