A major difficulty in tropical and monsoon research is the lack of routine conventional observations in the tropical and subtropical regions. Over the past several decades, a number of field experiments took place in which large amounts of resources were spent to make special or intensive observations over selected locations of interest. The data from these field campaigns have been invaluable as the main observation bases for advancing tropical and monsoon research. These data were created and used by various organizations and research groups and their storage status is quite varying. Researchers who wish to access these data often have to contact a variety of places to obtain the data. With the passing of time, there is a danger that some of the data will be difficult or impossible to find or retrieve.

The component of field program data sets that tends to have the greatest long-term value to the scientific community is the vertical profile represented by atmospheric sounding data. These observations are used most commonly for diagnostic studies, computing large-scale forcing datasets for CRM and SCM simulations, and for the development of cloud parameterizations for weather and climate models. There is currently no central location for access to all research-quality sounding data from past monsoon and tropical field experiments. NCAR has holdings from some past experiments, but the collections are by no means complete.

The Center for Monsoon Field Campaign Legacy Data Sets at Colorado State University will continue to collect and archive relevant field campaign data sets and make them available to the research community.

ATEX 1969 Atlantic Tradewind EXperiment ()

BOMEX 1969 Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological EXperiment Preliminary Report on the BOMEX Sea-Air Interaction Program (Holland 1970)

GATE 1974 GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment GATE Final International Scientific Plans (Kuettner et al. 1974)

WMONEX 1978 Winter MONsoon EXperiment The Winter Monsoon Experiment - Report of December 1978 Field Phase (Greenfield and Krishnamurti 1979)

ASTEX 1992 Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition EXperiment The Atlantic Stratocumulus Transition Experiment (Albrecht et al. 1995) Raw, Interpolated (z), Interpolated (z,t) sounding data from Valdiva Raw, Interpolated (z), Interpolated (z,t) sounding data from Porto Santo Raw, Interpolated (z), Interpolated (z,t) sounding data from Santa Maria Description and contents of files

TOGA COARE 1992-1993 Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere - Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment TOGA COARE: The Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (Webster and Lukas 1992) Merged profiler/rawinsonde datasets Gridded atmospheric datasets v2 regional averaged datasets over IFA

SCSMEX 1998 South China Sea Monsoon EXperiment A Report of the Field Operations and Early Results of the South China Sea Monsoon Experiment (Lau et al. 2000) Coded GTS sounding data High-res soundings from ships QC'd soundings from GAME domain QC'd gridded analyses v3 regional averaged datasets over NESA v3 regional averaged datasets over SESA

SALLJEX 2002-2003 South American Low Level Jet EXperiment The South American Low-Level Jet Experiment (Vera et al. 2006) Upper-air synoptic maps PiBal soundings Data inventory

NAME 2004 North American Monsoon Experiment The NAME 2004 Field Campaign and Modeling Strategy (Higgins et al. 2006) Pressure level horizontal maps v2.0 QCd sonde data v3.0 T1A and T2A gridded fields Vertical cross sections v3.1 EBA-averaged fields

NAMMA 2006 NASA African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses

TIMREX 2008 Terrain-Influenced Monsoon Rainfall EXperiment Pressure level horizontal maps QCd skew-t plots Vertical cross sections

The Center for Monsoon Field Campaign Legacy Data Sets has been approved by the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP). Access to all of these datasets, except for GATE and WMONEX, is currently available. Work is underway to identify and compile additional datasets from past field programs that should be archived and made accessible before they are lost forever. For the long term, it is important to arrange for permanent data centers to receive redundant copies of the data to ensure longevity of these important monsoon and tropical datasets.