Introduction

The experiment is planned between January 27th and March 6th 2004 at IPMet/UNESP balloon facility in Bauru, in coordination with the aircraft of the European TROCCINOX and the Brazilian TROCCIBRAS projects. It will make use of a variety of balloons and radio-sondes operated by the CNES Balloon Division in cooperation with IPMet/UNESP. Eighteen balloon flights are scheduled:

four long duration Infra-Red Montgolfier and eight long duration super-pressure balloons to explore the UTLS at global scale,
two 10 000 m3 (10 ZL), four 3 000 m3 heavy payload balloon (3SF) and 15 backscatter/O3 sondes for local measurements in the lower stratosphere and the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL) in conjunction with the TROCCINOX Geophysica and Falcon aircraft and two Bandeirantes Brazilian aircraft.

The HIBISCUS/TROCCINOX 2004 campaign is part of the EC VINTERSOL programme to which ESA and NASA are associated.