What: NASA hurricane researchers are available for a telephone news conference at 11 a.m. CDT June 23, to discuss the “Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes” mission to Costa Rica in July. There, in the Pacific Ocean’s “cradle of thunder,” mission scientists expect to observe the genesis of some of the world’s most dangerous weather formations.
The month-long project will document the development of tropical storms, hurricanes and related phenomena originating around Costa Rica, where the sheltering Guanacaste and Talamanca mountain ranges offer a prime site for the birth of violent weather patterns. The study continues NASA’s successful Convection and Moisture Experiment (CAMEX) research mission, a hurricane study begun in 1993. Today five NASA centers, 10 American universities and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are participants.
Participants:
- Dr. Ramesh Kakar, weather focus area leader for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate;
- Dr. Gerry Heymsfield, cloud radar expert and research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.;
- Dr. Edward Zipser, chairman and professor of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City; and
- Dr. Frank Marks, director of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami.
When: 11 a.m. CDT, June 23
For the call-in number, password and Internet site where graphics and other materials will be posted, reporters should call Tomeka Scales at 202/358-0781 by 4 p.m. CDT July 23.
For more information about the Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes mission, visit:
