NASA's Participation in the AVE-SESAME ‘79 Program

Abstract

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) participated with its AVE (Atmospheric Variability Experiment) in a large interagency mesoscale and severe storms experiment identified herein as AVE-SESAME ‘79 (Atmospheric Variability Experiment-Severe Environmental Storms and Mesoscale Experiment 1979). A primary objective of NASA was to support an effort to acquire carefully edited sets of rawinsonde data during selected severe weather events for use in correlative and diagnostic studies with satellite and radar data obtained at approximately the same times. Data were acquired during six individual 24 h experiments on both the regional and storm scales over a network in the central United States that utilized approximately 20 supplemental rawinsonde sites meshed among 23 standard National Weather Service sites. Included among the six experiments are data obtained between 1200 GMT on 10 April and 1200 GMT on 11 April, encompassing the formation and development period for the tornado-producing systems that devastated Wichita Falls, Tex., and other sections of Oklahoma and Texas. The other dates for which data sets are available are 19–20 and 25–26 April, 9–10 and 20–21 May, and 7–8 June 1979.