Oxidant and Particle Photochemical Processes above a South-East Asian tropical rain forest (OP3-Danum-08) is a 3-year Consortium Grant of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), beginning 1 October 2007. The OP3-Danum-08 consortium consists of 23 PIs and co-PIs from eight UK institutions (seven Universities and one NERC laboratory), plus partners from the Malaysian Meteorological Department, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Yayasan Sabah and USA. The project will utillize the NERC Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements reaserch aircraft ( FAAM) and a Global Atmosheric Watch station , with 100m research tower, in an undisturbed rainforest in Sabah Malaysia. The objectives of the OP3-Danum-08 project are (i) to understand how emissions of reactive trace gases from a tropical rain forest mediate the production and processing of oxidants and particles in the troposphere, and (ii) to better understand the impact of these processes on local, regional and global scale atmospheric composition, chemistry and climate. The field campaign phase of the project consists of 2 separate ground-based measurement periods at the Danum Valley Research centre (7th April - 4th May 2008 and 21st June - 27th July 2008). The second of these campaigns will involve concurrent observations above the ground based site aboard the FAAM BAe 146 aircraft, a collaboration between the Met Office(TM) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). There was also a ground based measurement period from 10th May - 12th June based at the Sabahmas Estate oil plantation, which was part of the APPRAISE funded ACES project. Data from all 4 parts of the project can be found in the OP3 archive. The OP3 project is led by Professor Nick Hewitt (University of Lancaster)

These data consist of sets of 3-dimensional gridpoint analyses of the stratosphere which are produced by the Met Office using data from the TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) instruments onboard the NOAA (National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration) operational polar orbiters. TOVS consists of 3 instruments, the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and the High Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS). Daily radiance and geopotential height data are available on a 5 degree latitude / longitude global grid from December 1978 to April 1997. Software is provided to derive potential vorticity. Access permission required so that PI can monitor usage of data.

The International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions - process modelling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets. The ISLSCP II dataset contains comprehensive data over the 10 year period from 1986 to 1995, from the International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP). The ISLSCP II datasets are compiled in four key areas: land cover, hydrometeorlolgy, radiation and soils. They are mapped to consistent grids (0.5 x 0.5 degrees for topography, 1 x 1 degrees for meteorological parameters). Some data have a grid size of 0.25 x 0.25 degrees. The temporal resolution for most data sets is monthly (however a few are at finer resolution - 3 hourly). This dataset is public. ISLSCP is one of several projects of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), and has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions - process modelling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets. ISLSCP was established in 1983 under the United Nation's Environmental Programme to promote the use of satellite data for the global land surface data sets needed for climate studies. In 1994, ISLSCP produced a five-volume CD-ROM collection of global data sets to support energy, water and biogeochemical cycling studies, covering 1987 - 1988 - the ISLSCP I Initiative. The ISLSCP I data sets are available via the BADC ISLSCP I page. The ISLSCP working group meet regularly to assist Goddard Space Flight Center staff to coordinate production and publication of the various data sets in the data collection.

Under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Working Group on Cloupled Modelling (WGCM) established the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) as a standard experimental protocol for studying the output of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs). CMIP provides a community-based infrastructure in support of climate model diagnosis, validation, intercomparison, documentation and data access. This framework enables a diverse community of scientists to analyze GCMs in a systematic fashion, a process which serves to facilitate model improvement. The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) archives much of the CMIP data. Part of the CMIP archive constitutes phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), a collection of climate model output from simulations of the past, present and future climate. This unprecedented collection of recent model output is officially known as the "WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset". It is meant to serve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Working Group 1, which focuses on the physical climate system -- atmosphere, land surface, ocean and sea ice -- and the choice of variables archived reflects this focus. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program to assess scientific information on climate change. The IPCC publishes reports that summarize the state of the science. The research based on this dataset provided much of the new material underlying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Data from the Met Office's Cyclone Database, consisting of flat files from the database covering 2000-2005 with associated charts. The database holds lists of cyclones, their types and structural information about each cyclone and associated features as derived from analysis of the UK Met Office Unified Model. Accurate prediction of severe weather events is a key Met Office goal. As cyclonic systems are responsible for the vast majority of these events, accurate cyclone prediction is also high priority. Although huge strides have been made in numerical weather prediction (NWP) in recent years, cyclonic systems continue to pose problems for numerical models. Three "exceptional" depressions in the Christmas periods of 1997 and 1999, and another in early December 1999 were all poorly forecast by most of the world's operational models, indicating that there is plenty of scope for improvement. The rationale for constructing a cyclone database (previously called the "Frontal Wave Database") is described in detail in Hewson (1998b). The main motivation was the identification and representation of systematic model biases in new formats which, from most practical perspectives, represent a notable improvement on more traditional r.m.s. error based statistics. Evidently improved knowledge of cyclone forecast characteristics will be valuable not only to the NWP community, but also to forecasting, in part because operational practice now involves using "Field Modification" software to prepare forecast charts (Carroll, 1997), which can be used to correct for known biases.

The Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) instrument was launched on the METOP satellite in October 2006 (delayed from April 2006). The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat) is providing funds for the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurement (FAAM) aircraft BAe146 to be involved in validation of IASI radiative transfer and some level 2 products. Flights were flown over oceans to coincide with METOP satellite overpasses. Further flights were flown low level over specific land calibration sites to characterise land surface emissivity. There were co-incident flights with other platforms including US ER-2 or Proteus aircraft and French high altitude balloon. This dataset contains FAAM flight tracks and flight summaries, it does not, however, contain data collected by IASI on the Metop satellite.

The Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) was a US-led international project to study trade wind cumulus clouds in the Caribbean. The main objective was to characterise and understand the properties of trade wind cumulus at all scales, with particular emphasis on understanding the warm rain process and determining its importance. The field campaign took place near Antigua and Barbuda from the 17th of November 2004 to the 24th of January 2005. The UK participation to RICO involved ground-based measurements and the use of the FAAM aircraft based at Antigua, from the 5th to the 28th of January 2005.

This dataset collection contains global profiles of aerosols and clouds, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and water vapour from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) instrument on board a Meteor-3M spacecraft, launched on December 10, 2001. Routine measurement operations began in March 2002 until the SAGE III mission was terminated in March 2006. The specific measurement objectives of SAGE III provided 1 km vertical resolution profiles of: aerosols and clouds at seven wavelengths from the mid-troposphere into the stratosphere and, where appropriate, the mesosphere; O3 from the mid-troposphere to 85 km; H2O from the planetary boundary layer to 50 km; NO2 from the tropopause to 45 km; NO3 from 20 to 55 km; OClO from 15 to 25 km; and, O2 from the mid-troposphere to 70 km.

The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) is an instrument built and operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The instrument uses backscattered ultraviolet radiance to infer total column ozone measurements. The data consists of daily gridded averages of total ozone covering the entire globe. The original Nimbus-7 TOMS operated from November 1978 until May 1993. Meteor-3 TOMS was launched in August 1991 and operated until December 1994. These CDs contain the total ozone and UV radiance data.

The Greenland Flow Distortion EXperiment, based in Keflavik, Iceland, took place during February 2007. Its aim was to improve the understanding and ability to predict interactions between the atmospheric circulation and the topography of Greenland, both locally and downstream over Western Europe. Hitherto rare in situ observations of high-impact weather systems and their associated air-sea fluxes in the coastal seas of Greenland, were obtained and will be used to improve the numerical modelling and prediction of these weather systems, and thus improve the quality of the atmospheric forcing fields that are essential for accurate atmosphere-ocean coupling and the thermohaline circulation. These measurements will also be used to improve the numerical modelling and prediction of high-impact weather systems over Europe through the use of targeted observations upstream in sensitive areas of the flow. This project investigates the role of Greenland in defining the structure and the predictability of both local and downstream weather systems, through a programme of aircraft-based observation and numerical modelling. The Greenland Flow Distortion Experiment (GFDex) will provide some of the first detailed in situ observations of the intense atmospheric forcing events that are thought to be important in modifying the ocean in this area (but are presently poorly understood): namely tip jets, barrier winds and mesoscale cyclones. Tip jets form at the southern tip of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, through the forcing of flow over and around the topography. Barrier winds occur when the large-scale flow is piled up against the southeast coast of Greenland, forcing winds parallel to the coast. While located off this southeast coast is an area of frequent mesoscale cyclogenesis. GFDex will also investigate Greenlands role in atmospheric flow predictability by carrying out upstream observations that are targeted at investigating the sensitivity of the downstream flow to the details of the upstream flow and at improving subsequent forecasts over Europe. Greenlands flow distortion can trigger large-scale atmospheric Rossby waves which influence weather systems thousands of kilometres away and several days later. These waves are by nature predictable, so by adapting our observing strategy to target specific areas, improvements in subsequent forecasts over the United Kingdom are possible. Numerical modelling experiments after the field campaign will be used to assess any improvements from the additional targeted observations. While further numerical modelling studies of the high impact local weather systems will be evaluated and refined using the aircraft-based observations. This will increase our understanding of these systems and, through comparisons with other observations and data sets, provide accurate fields of air-sea heat and moisture fluxes for driving ocean and climate models.