The Office of Polar Programs, Antarctic Ocean and Atmospheric Science Program and Geosciences Directorate, Atmospheric Science Division have made this award to support the deployment of innovative driftsonde gondolas on super high pressure balloons to be launched from McMurdo by the French Centre National D'Etudes Spatiales. The instrumented balloons will be released during August to November 2008 in the polar stratospheric vortex as part of the international CONCORDIASI atmospheric science project. The long-duration balloons will drift for up to several months carrying driftsondes comprised of up to 60 miniature dropsondes that can be released remotely upon demand to vertically profile the atmosphere from flight level to the ground for temperature, humidity, pressure and wind speed. The data will be posted and made accessible in near real time. Broader impacts: The driftsonde data to be contributed by NCAR are essential to the atmospheric studies targeted by CONCORDIASI ranging from the understanding of gravity wave propagation in the stratosphere to stratospheric cloud particle formation and ozone depletion to validation of satellite sensors that promise to lead to improved operational forecasting for Antarctica. Meteo France plans to use the driftsonde data to calibrate the Infrared Advanced Sounder Interferometer (IASI) sensor launched on the European METOP satellite in October 2006 for operational forecasting applications in polar regions. Additional ground based atmospheric soundings are to be undertaken at several other locations including the newly established Italian-French research station CONCORDIA on Dome C. CONCORDIASI (which is a contraction of CONCORDIA and IASI) stems from a French-US partnership involving a number of institutions, namely NCAR, UWyoming,and UCLA in the US, and CNES. Meteo France, Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique, Institut Paul Emile Victor and the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environment in France. CONCORDIASI is a contribution to the IPY-The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiments (THORPEX) cluster of activities approved by the ICSU-WMO panel. THORPEX is a ten-year program within the World Weather Research Program.
