GTE TRACE-P EXPEDITION
PLAN
PREFACE
The following document provides a description
of the scientific objectives, measurements, and implementation
plan for the NASA Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific
(TRACE-P)
scheduled for early spring 2001. Related missions, PEM-West
A and B, were conducted in 1991 and 1994, respectively. These
missions are part of a continuing series of field studies that
NASA has conducted over the past decade through its Global
Tropospheric Experiment (GTE), a major component of the Tropospheric
Chemistry Program within NASA's Earth
Science Enterprise Office. Guidance for the GTE field studies
has come from ad hoc planning meetings, convened by the Manager
of the Tropospheric Chemistry Program. Emerging from the first
of these planning meeting in July 1984 was a recommended long-range
plan for a series of field studies to be conducted through the
NASA Tropospheric Chemistry Program, and, where possible, coordinated
with other national and international studies.
The recommended field measurements included studies
of tropical forest, Arctic tundra, global distributions, long-range
transport, as well as instrument intercomparisons. Since that initial
meeting, four other planning meetings have been convened to review
and update this long-range plan. The recommendations of these meetings
have resulted in field studies of the Amazon Rain Forest and the
northern latitude tundra (e.g. Atmospheric
Boundary Layer Experiments, ABLE-2 and ABLE-3), evaluation
of instrumentation for measurements of odd nitrogen and sulfur
species (e.g. Chemical
Instrumentation Test and Evaluation, CITE -2 and -3), measurements
over the tropical Atlantic (e.g. Transport
and Atmospheric Chemistry near the Equator- Atlantic, TRACE-A)
and the current series of studies over the Pacific (e.g. Pacific
Exploratory Missions, PEM-West A and B, PEM-Tropics
A&B, and the current TRACE-P). The PEM experiments, along
with TRACE-A and -P, are viewed as providing global distributions
of key atmospheric species and studying their long-range transport.
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