D - F
type: Concept

ERICA
type: Concept
in scheme: projects
definition: Scientific Objectives: -Understanding the fundamental physical processes occuring in the atmosphere during rapid intensification of cyclones at sea. -Determining those physical processes that need to be incorporated into dynamical prediction models. -Identifying measurable precursors as necessary input into the initial analysis for accurate and detailed operational model predictions. Project Description: The Experiment on Rapidly Intensifying Cyclones over the Atlantic (ERICA), under the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Heavy Weather at Sea Accelerated Research Initiative program, is a study to determine physical mechanisms and processes which lead to explosive wintertime storms developing over the Atlantic Ocean. ERICA is a follow-up study to the Genesis of Atlantic Lows Experiment (GALE), conducted in the winter of 1986. Other contributors include several departments of the Navy and the Air Force as well as the National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS), Environmental Research Laboratory (ERL), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Energy (DOE), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Air Weather Service (AWS), Atmospheric Environment Service (AES) of Toronto, Canada, along with universities and research organizations in the United States and Canada. Operations are being carried out at three main centers; the World Weather Building, Camp Springs, Maryland, Maritimes Weather Center, Bedford, Nova Scotia and Naval Air Station, Brunswick, Maine. The field phase of ERICA began 1 December 1988 and ended 26 February 1989. The experiment was designed to focus on east coast winter storms that rapidly intensified over a few hours and a few hundred kilometers and deepened tens of millibars per six hours. These ERICA-type storms in the previous 22 years before the field study mainly developed over the northweste…