VOCALS

The VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study (VOCALS) is an international CLIVAR program the major goal of which is to develop and promote scientific activities leading to improved understanding of the SEP coupled ocean-atmosphere-land system on diurnal to inter-annual timescales. The principal program objectives are:

1. the improved understanding and regional/global model representation of aerosol indirect effects over the SEP
2. the elimination of systematic errors in the region of coupled atmospheric-ocean general circulation models, and improved model simulations and predictions of the coupled climate in the SEP and global impacts of the system variability

VOCALS is organized into two tightly coordinated components:

1. a Regional Experiment (VOCALS-REx), and
2. a Modeling Program (VOCALS-Mod). Extended observations (e.g. IMET buoy, satellites, EPIC/PACS cruises) will provide important additional contextual datasets that help to link the field and the modeling components. The coordination through VOCALS of observational and modeling efforts will accelerate the rate at which field data can be used to improve simulations and predictions of the tropical climate variability. VOCALS is a CLIVAR program sponsored by NSF and NOAA with contributions from ONR and DoE.