Background: SALSTICE is a follow on campaign to the JAIVEx campaign in 2007 (based out in Houston, Texas) with the newly launched MetOp-A satellite. In its original acronym of ?IASI-2? SALSTICE was planned as a follow-on campaign after the launch of MetOp-B in September 2012. The Met Office wish to make this more than just a satellite cal/val campaign and now plan a large element focusing on land surface temperature (LST). Campaign location
is Tucson, Arizona in the semi-arid southwestern USA where model LST performs poorly.

Scientific motivation:
1.The instruments on MetOp-B are currently in check-out mode - their performance needs testing and airborne cal/val is an important part of this process
2.We can compare infrared measurements from ARIES with similar data from IASI instrument on MetOp
3.Release of dropsondes and in situ measurements (temperature, water vapour, chemistry) will be used to validate retrievals of these quantities from satellite
4.Cal/val is needed in different conditions (over land/sea; in clear and cloudy skies)
5.The Met Office forecast model appears to get LST wrong the daytime - this is particularly the case over certain regions (southern USA, central Africa, parts of Eurasia)
6.These biases can be BIG - around 10 K too high in Arizona
7.It is advantageous to tie in measurements from surface sites in Arizona run by US Dept of Agriculture (flux towers and other data)
8.We need a comprehensive data set of aircraft measured LST, emissivity, radiative fluxes and momentum/moisture fluxes