GPS & VLBI Meteorology over Northeast Brazil: Perspectives

Alexandre A. CostaAlexandre A. Costa (*), A. M. P. de Lucena, P.Kaufmann, F. S. A. Cavalcante, F. G. M. Pinheiro, F.

A. T. F. da Silva, J. B. V. Leal Jr., V. P. Silva-Filho

(*) Head, Meteorology Department, FUNCEME andProfessor, Applied Physical Sciences Graduate Program, UECE

Eusébio Station

• Radio-observatory linked to INPE

• Prospectives of cooperative agreement with FUNCEME and UECE (focus on meteorology and atmospheric physics).

Role of the Tropics...

Every year...

... ITCZ visits Northeast Brazil: March-April

UECE’s Graduate Program

• Applied Physical Sciences (started working on “Meteorology and Energy” as its major research line): 16 students in March-06.

• Atmospheric Physics Group: 4 Ph.D.’s, 2 M.Sc., graduate and undergraduate students

UECE’s Research Infrastructure

• Instrumented Aircraft

Meteorological instrumentation

FSSP and Csiro-KingOAP 200X and 200Y

CCN counter

Global Positioning System

Data Acquisition System

FUNCEME: 30 years of Operational Meteorology

• Department of Meteorology and Oceanography: 4 Ph.D. (2 more being hired), 5 M.Sc. (2 more being hired)

• Infrastructure: Satellite images (NOAA, Meteosat, MSG being installed), Doppler radar (at UECE campus), 70 automatic surface stations, about 600 raingauges, 30-processor, 7 TB PC Cluster, PIRATA office

Observational Network

Meteorological Radar

Conventional Rain Gage Network

DCP´s Network

meteorological satellites

Oceanographic Buoy PIRATA Project

PC cluster for climate simulations(funding for a second cluster for weather/wind

energy prediction was aproved)

EXIMIA:EXperimento Integrado de MeteorologIA(Integrated Meteorological Experiment)

2005 – Initial Planning

2006 – Final Planning and Funding submission

2007 – Preparation, Training

2007-2008 – Field Campaigns (dry season and wet season)

After that:

Data analysis...

EXIMIA components

• EMAS-2 (Experimento de Mesoescala na Atmosfera do Sertão, Mesoscale Experiment in the Dry Land Atmosphere)

• EMfiN! (Experimento de Microfísica de Nuvens, Cloud Microphysics Experiment)

• Micrometeorological measurements• Surface meteorological observations• Radiation observations• Calibration of radar, satellite and GPS-VLBI

retrievals for the tropical region

In Place of Conclusions

• Nice combination of infrastructure in meteorology and atmospheric physics, personnel, operation and education+research potential

• Interest of cooperating with VLBI-GPS community as “end” user (the end is actually in the society)

• Hope to show results next time...