GLOBAL OBSERVATION AND ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF PRECIPITATION PROCESSES IN NUMERICAL MODELS IS VITAL TO IMPROVING OUR CURRENT UNDERSTANDING AND FUTURE SIMULATIONS OF EARTH'S CLIMATE SYSTEM. BOTH SPACEBORNE RETRIEVAL ALGORITLUNS AND MODEL PARAMETERIZATION SCHEMES TRADITIONALLY RELY ON FIELD CAMPAIGN DATASETS AS A BASIS FOR EVALUATING AND IMPROVING THE PHYSICS OF THEIR RESPECTIVEAPPROACHES. THE GLOBAL PRECIPITATION MEASUREMENT MISSION (GPM) ALSO SUPPORTS LAND HYDROLOGY STUDIES TO IMPROVE HYDROLOGICAL MODELING AND PREDICTION. THE INTEGRATED PRECIPITATION AND HYDROLOGY EXPERIMENT (IPHEX) WILL BE CONDUCTED IN COOPERATION WITH THE NOAA HMT-SE PILOT STUDY (HMT SEPS) DURING LATE SPRING OF2014. THE EXPERIMENT WILL USE THE INSTRUMENTED NASA ER-2 AND AN IN SITU AIRCRAFT FOR FLIGHTS OVER GROUND SITES LOCATED IN NORTH CAROLINA.GROUNDWBASED SENSORS TO MEASURE PRECIPITATION WIND FIELDS AND SURFACE/SUBSURFACE CONDITIONS WILL ALSO BE DEPLOYED. DATA FROM THE EXPERIMENT WILL BE USED TO VALIDATE GPM PRECIPITATION RETRIEVAL ALGORITHMS AND IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE TIME AND SPACE SCALES WHERE OPM SATELLITE DATA ARE USEFUL FOR HYDROLOGIC PREDICTION.THIS PROPOSAL FOCUSES ON SUPPORT FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA CESSNA CITATION AIRCRAFT FOR PARTICIPATION IN IPHEX. THE CITATION WILL BE DEPLOYED TO COLLECT IN SITU MEASUREMENTS OF CLOUD MICROPHYSICS AND STATE OF THE ATMOSPHERE OBSERVATIONS WHICH WILL BE COLLECTED IN COORDINATION - WITH REMOTE SENSING OBSERVATIONS COLLECTED BY THE NASA ER-2 AIRCRAFT. BOTH IN SITU AND REMOTESENSING AIRBORNE OBSERVATIONS ARE NECESSARY TO COMPREHENSIVELY DESCRIBE THE PROPERTIES OF PRECIPITATING CLOUD SYSTEMS. DATA COLLECTED BY THE CITATION DURING THE FIELD CAMPAIGN WILL BE SUBJECT TO QUALITY ASSURANCE AND CONTROL PROCEDURES TO ENSURE A HIGH QUALITY DATA SET. THE FINAL EDITED DATA SET WILL BE SUBMITTED TO NASA FOR ARCHIVAL. A PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF THE CLOUD MICROPHYSICAL PROPERTIES SAMPLED IN IPHEX IS ALSO BEING PROPOSED.