The First ISCCP Regional Experiment (FIRE; ISCCP is the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project) was organized by a group of atmospheric scientists and federal agencies in 1984 to address fundamental processes involving clouds and radiation in the climate system. The coordinated research effort sought to expand the basic knowledge of the interaction between clouds and climate, to improve the understanding of radiative and physical processes climatically important cloud systems, and to improve satellite-based cloud-radiative monitoring systems (i.e., ISCCP) and global climate model parameterizations. That cloud systems play crucial roles in the Earth's climate system is universally accepted. The complexity of these roles demands a continuing, methodical, and scientific set of investigations in order to reach the goal of being able to understand, simulate, and anticipate global climate change.
Because of the complexity and urgency of the cloud-radiation-climate problem, FIRE has pursued several strategies in parallel: Monitoring, Modeling, and Field Measurements. ISCCP was designed to provide the first global monitoring of cloud systems from the unique vantage point of space. In spite of its limitations, ISCCP has provided the most complete, objective global cloud census to date. At this time, one of the largest uncertainties in the large scale climate models is their treatment of cloud systems. The modeling of many physical processes on many different time and space scales is crucially important to the success of FIRE. Both physical process modeling, which includes all processes important to the characterization and evolution of cloud systems, and global climate modeling with general-circulation models (GCMs) are components of the FIRE research program. With our inability to bring the atmosphere into the laboratory, and with the inadequate understanding and representations of cloud systems in models, field measurements are required to gain understanding and to verify and improve both our monitoring and modeling capabilities for these systems. The synergism among these three strategies has proven to be essential for our progress towards our goal of understanding, mitigating, and adapting to climate variability and change.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the lead agency for FIRE. The FIRE project office is located at the NASA/Langley Research Center, and is directly responsible to the NASA Radiation Sciences Program administered by NASA Headquarters. Extensive cooperation and very significant contributions to FIRE are provided by its federal supporting agencies, the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Naval Research (ONR), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Energy (DOE), and the Department of Defense (DOD). In addition, international contributions have been provided in the past by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO), United Kingdom; the Centre de la Recherche Scientifique (CRS), France; National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (INMG), Portugal; Academy of Sciences, Russia; and several other international organizations.
While all cloud systems are important to climate studies, some are potentially more important than others because of their pervasiveness, both geographically and temporally. For FIRE, the primary emphasis was on the study of marine stratocumulus and cirrus cloud systems . These two cloud types were selected because of the recognized importance of their strong effects on the Earth's radiation budget, their impact on global climate, their possible strong feedback associated with climate change, and their scientific appeal for many members of the scientific community. In addition, these two cloud system are particularly difficult to detect from space, and hence ISCCP would benefit from their improved understanding and determination.
The FIRE I (1984-1989) and FIRE II (1989-1994) phases of the program focused on understanding climatically important midlatitude cirrus and marine boundary layer cloud systems. FIRE I focused on midlatitude cirrus clouds and northeastern Pacific marine stratocumulus clouds. FIRE II expanded the emphasis on midlatitude cirrus to include subtropical and tropical cirrus cloud systems and to study the transition region of the northeastern Atlantic marine stratocumulus. Both phases conducted intensive field observations (IFOs) on these cloud systems. The field campaigns yielded a wealth of information on and insight into how cloud amount and radiative properties are related to multiple scales of dynamic forcing, thermodynamic structure, and microphysical processes. A distinct feature of the FIRE campaigns was the integrated nature of the data sets, which are a blended derivative of local observations, remote sensing from surface sites, aircraft and satellites, and large/regional scale analyses from forecast models. This research requires the collaboration of multiple investigators and typically takes several years to bring to fruition.
FIRE extended its cloud-radiation research into a third phase called FIRE III (1995-2000). FIRE III will benefit from the data sets, lessons learned, and advances in understanding of its predecessors. An important part of FIRE III is the continuing analysis of FIRE data sets along with further exploration of outstanding problems relating to cirrus and boundary layer cloud systems. FIRE III extends the scope of the program to lower-latitude, high-altitude cloud systems (tropical cirrus) and higher-latitude, low-altitude cloud systems (Arctic clouds). The development of instrumentation and techniques to observe key properties of cloud systems is also a high priority effort of FIRE III.
The
sequencing and locations
of the IFO's and Extended Time Observations are shown for the
three phases of FIRE.
