Monthly Archives: September 2011

A plane – but not as you know it

From Dirk (ESA), the Netherlands, 7 September

I'm just back in the Netherlands after my stint working on the campaign over Greece and Turkey to collect measurements of aerosols. So unfortunately, I wasn't able to join the crew on yesterday's campaign flight.

Nevertheless, I still felt very much part of the team as we communicated throughout the five-hour flight by means of an online chat room – there is an internet connection on the plane. 

Drinks and snacks are served during the campaign flight

Drinks and snacks are served during the campaign flight

Being able to do this just made me think how cool technology is – so, guys on the plane, a team from the UK Met Office, the ground team in Greece and myself were all able to discuss some of the ad hoc changes we had to make during the flight and all be involved in how the flight and data acquisitions were progressing.

As it turned out, the Turkish military were carrying out some exercises in the area so we couldn't fly the route we'd originally planned. Hence, the online chat option proved an excellent tool to discuss what to do for the best.

The flight scored an 8/10 on the achievement ratings, which is pretty good considering we lost marks for not being able to follow our planned path!

They collected data on aerosols very high in the atmosphere and over Crete they may have even picked up some dust blowing from the Sahara.

The cabin is crammed with equipment

The cabin is crammed with equipment

Since I have been unable take photos of the outside of the plane or even of any views from the plane because of military action in the area, I thought I'd share a couple of photos from inside.  

You can see that, indeed, the interior the usual cabin-shaped cabin but instead of seats it's crammed with equipment. There are in-flight services though …. the flight attendants serve drinks and snacks!

A weekend flying in squares

From Dirk (ESA), Greece, 3 September

Flying in squares over Turkey

On Friday, we spent a lot of time working out the best flight path for Saturday's flight. The weather forecast indicated that it would be cloudy towards the northern leg of the path we had hoped to take – so we decided to stick to the south of Turkey where it promised to be clearer.

The idea was to fly in 'boxes' or 'squares' around different points the GOSAT satellite would be sensing. The aim was to give us a better understanding of the variability in the aerosols layers. The satellite gives us pixels of 10×10 km so we wanted so see how the aerosols actually differ in this range.

While we were planning all this, the plane took off from Chania airport to sample aerosols along the flight path of the NASA/CNES Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations, or CALISPO, satellite.

 So, on Saturday, according to our revised plan, we set off up along the Turkish coast and flew in boxes around certain GOSAT target points, avoiding the cloudy areas further north.

The map above shows our route and target points.

In the southern-most box we saw a big forest fire and hopefully caught some aerosols generated from the fire.

Aerosol layers over Turkey during Saturday's flight

The plot above shows the different aerosol layers and a single cloud in yellow at the time the satellite was above.

All in all, it was another successful flight even though cloud prevented us sampling all the target points we had originally hoped to catch.

We also had a little celebration on Saturday as it was the BAe 146-301 aircraft's 30th birthday!

Aerosols revealed

From Dirk (ESA) – Carbonexp campaign, Greece, 1 September

Today, more observations of aerosols over the Aegean Sea will be made from another flight in support of a project funded by the European Facility for Airborne Research.

This gives us time to work on the data from the yesterday's flight and also to start planning the next flight on Saturday.

As far as we can judge, all the measurement instruments on the aircraft worked well and the downward-looking lidar has yielded the first plot of aerosols.

Aerosols over Aegean Sea from first campaign flight

Aerosols over Aegean Sea from first campaign flight

The aerosols can be seen as a light yellow layer around 7000–8000 ft, which corresponds to about 2100–2500m above the ground.

It is thicker at the beginning of the plot and follows the ground – clearly visible in bright yellow. This is a typical example of an aerosol layer we are looking for.

The flight conditions during this flight were good, but we hope to get even better conditions with more aerosols for the next flight.

 

First flight chasing aerosols

From Dirk (ESA) – Carbonexp campaign, Greece, 31 August

Dirk on aircraft next to monitoring screens

Dirk on aircraft next to monitoring screens

We are just back from our first flight chasing aerosols. The flight took 5 hours and 1 minute, to be exact.

We were able to take off at 12:12 (local time) and precisely followed the flight path we had worked out. In the debriefing meeting the mission scientist, Dave Kindred, gave the flight 7 out of 10 points. So, for a first flight it went pretty well, but there is still room for improvement.

We gathered a lot of data and hope we had a good match with the GOSAT satellite orbiting above. There was little cloud and we had some nice variations in the aerosol layers over land, which seemed to be relatively stable.

As soon as I have some first results I will put them on the blog.

Unfortunately, I am not allowed to take pictures around the aircraft because the military is operating here at the moment. However, more information about the aircraft can be found at: http://www.faam.ac.uk