Monday, Nov. 6, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"lightning"

Cloudy, partly rain (photo-1)
South-easterly (3m/s) was dominant, and wave height lies between 1.3-1.4m.

Observations:

All measurement systems were continuously operated.
Videosonde was launched at 1808 LST.
At the midnight, we could see many lightnings over the southern ocean. In the daytime, many precipitation systems moved westward and some of them were organized in the late afternoon.
When we launched the videosonde, it mostly consisted of stratiform clouds. The 0 degC melting layer became weak, and precipitable water vapor exceeds 60 mm.

Remarks:

We tried to launch the vdeosonde in the stratiform rain. Actually, we expected much precipitation echoes would come over the MIRAI, but most of them decayed. Photo-2 shows that researchers are waiting for capturing of precipitation particles.
In the daytime, we had the 3rd MIRAI seminar (photos-3, 4). Today, we had two young scientists who talked on MJO life cycle and precipitation characteristics of tropical cyclone revealed from TRMM.