OTREC: Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection

Summary

OTREC (Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection) is a field campaign during the latter part of summer (August through September 2019) over a domain covering the eastern Pacific ocean and the southwest Caribbean. This is an area which exhibits a great deal of diversity in convective behavior but is very poorly understood compared to other tropical regions. The two regions together provide a broad range of atmospheric conditions that have not been previously studied using modern observational tools. OTREC aims to make the measurements in the east Pacific and southwest Caribbean that are needed to understand how convection there works together with the large scale circulations in this region.

The vertical structure and spatial distribution of deep atmospheric convection is of critical importance to tropical weather and climate and determining the large-scale environmental factors that control convection over tropical oceans is a long-standing problem in meteorology. OTREC's radar measurements of precipitation in conjunction with dropsonde measurements will deepen our knowledge of East Pacific convection, aid in the interpretation of satellite observations, and improve the understanding of tropical weather systems in the East Pacific.