M. Pniel, Operations and Mission Planning Working Group, said that the U.S. and Japan have agreed that, in the period Day 105 through Day 180, DARs will be limited to important acquisitions. The U.S. and the Japanese agreed that an operations manual is needed for use during normal operations. The same sites are also submitted to be Local STARs to be collected annually. Five validation sites have been identified to be viewed at every opportunity during Days 40-105 after launch. Speed improvements are underway.
Work continues on the nighttime version.
June 1997 field campaign plans are well under way. They propose to add a tropical site to their test site list probably in conjunction with the Amazon people. He said that a major concern with the present design of the algorithm is the difficulty of getting precise temperatures and emissivities in a case where the downwelling radiation is a large part of the emitted radiation. The WG s outside-Japan Regional Monitoring and Local STARs. Most of these center on the east-Asian region.