We were very pleased with the PACDEX planning meeting that was held on October 12 at the RAF. 32 people attended the meeting, representing all the NSF PACDEX PIs and several other groups. Some noteworthy items from the meeting include:

• The group from NASA Langley (led by Pat Minnis) was represented by Kirk Ayers, who expressed an interest in collaborating scientifically with the project (under NASA support). They offered to provide customized satellite products for forecasting, nowcasting, and post project analysis. The software that they use for display of the data and the customized data products they plan to provide for the PACDEX archive will be especially helpful. We may need NSF to send a letter to NASA inviting/requesting their participation. Julie Haggerty, a scientist in EOL, does water/ice discrimination with satellite data and she has worked with Pat and Kirk before. Julie will join the PACDEX group of scientists and she plans to collaborate with the Langley group to document water and ice clouds during PACDEX.
• The group from NRL Monterey (Doug Westphal and Anthony Bucholtz, who could not attend but sent slides) will provide forecasting support for the project (Westphal), using the NOGAPS, NAAPS, and COAMPS models. Anthony Bucholtz has offered to provide data from their MAARCO Mobile Atmospheric Aerosol and Radiation Characterization Observatory for PACDEX.
• Ken Sassen (U. of Alaska, Fairbanks, who could not attend but sent slides) will provide lidar data from a cloud polarization lidar, a polarization diversity lidar, and a W-band Doppler radar, for the cases where the plume goes over Fairbanks. An overflight of his site should be quite possible, since some of the PACDEX operations should be conducted out of Anchorage.
• Greg Carmichael was not able to attend, but he sent slides to describe the products he was planning to make available for project forecasting. He also described how his model could be customized for specific variables of interest.
• Phil Rasch represented the NCAR CGD modeling group. They expect to help lead the decision making for the PACDEX flights. We discussed flight planning scenarios with Phil in both a forecasting and real time (flight support) mode. We hope to start pre project forecasting (dry runs) about two weeks prior to the start of the project.
• José Meitín (EOL Field Project Services) will provide overall project coordination and Greg Stossmeister (EOL, CDS) will provide data management and a data catalog for the project. They outlined and discussed the services that will be provided to the project.
• The PACDEX instrumentation PIs (Twohy, Baumgardner, Anderson, DeMott, Roberts) attended along with the HAIS instrument PIs (Campos, Pilewskie, Heymsfield). Each instrument was discussed in the context of what flight and installation requirements were planned. Peter Pilewskie also hopes to participate in the analysis of data from PACDEX in addition to his role as a data provider for HARP (HIAPER radiation instrument). He will likely contact you about a proposal for his scientific interests.
• Pavel Romashkin (RAF PACDEX project management lead), Dave Rogers (RAF), and Kurt Zrubek discussed the aircraft payload, inlet and configuration issues. Zrubek led a discussion of certification procedures. We don't see any major problems right now, but the certification and flight testing schedule will be tight. We discussed the possibility of moving the project ahead a couple of weeks, but agreed that we need to wait a few more weeks before a final decision is made.
• Although we do not plan to fly west of Japan, two groups in China (Peking University and Lanzhou University) have agreed to provide ground and lidar data to the project. Yan Feng (Scripps) will coordinate the effort with the Chinese and use their data for her studies on the origin of dust. A group from Korea (Seoul National University) has also agreed to provide Lidar and ground-based data. The data from each of these groups will be helpful for launch decisions and for providing source characterization data for dust events.
• Al Cooper (G-V Chief Scientist) also attended the meeting. He plans to participate in PACDEX. He was a great help to T-Rex and we expect him to play an important role in this project, especially in coordinating the effort to implement the new HIAPER instruments and other data sources for the project. Al's background in cloud physics should be most helpful to the project. Also, this "rapid deployment, long flight leg" research is somewhat of a new paradigm for NCAR (and our PIs) that we hope will become more routine. Al is working to make this a reality for HIAPER.
• Several NCAR management groups were represented at the meeting, including Karyn Sawyer (EOL Director's office), Brigitte Baeuerle (EOL, FPS), Mike Daniels (EOL, CDS) and Frank Flocke (ACD, CARI group lead).

In summary we were pleased at the participation in this project and the prospects for a good study. We hope to do two more planning meetings, with one possibly being done at the AGU meeting later this year.

Jeff and Ram