Schematic of the Variability of the American Monsoon Systems (VAMOS) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Regional Experiment (VOCALS-REx).

VOCALS-REx Field Campaign

During October and November 2008, some 150 scientists from 40 institutions in eight nations will take part in the Variability of the American Monsoon Systems' (VAMOS) Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study Regional Experiment (VOCALS-REx). VOCALS-REx is an international field program designed to make observations of critical components in the coupled climate system of the southeastern Pacific that are poorly understood and poorly represented in global climate models. That region is dominated by strong coastal upwelling and extensive cold sea surface temperatures; and it is home to the largest deck of stratocumulus clouds on Earth.

Specific foci of the campaign will be on processes controlling the properties of stratocumulus clouds, processes controlling the ocean transport of cold freshwater offshore, and chemical and physical interactions between the lower atmosphere and upper ocean. The experiment is a major component of the VOCALS program whose primary goal is to achieve improved understanding, model simulations, and predictions of the southeastern Pacific region's coupled ocean-atmosphere-land system on diurnal to inter-annual timescales. VOCAL-REx is an interagency effort with major contributions from the NOAA Climate Program Office's Climate Prediction Program for the Americas (CPPA). For more information, visit the VOCALs Web site.