Scientists brave the elements to support ESA’s water mission

Posted on 19/12/2012 by honora

From Giovanni Macelloni (IFAC–CNR), Italy, 19 December

In support of the ESA’s SMOS water mission, some scientists from my team have been busy setting up equipment in far reaches of Antarctica.

The Italian-French Concordia base. The main base is in the white cylindrical buildings. (IFAC)

 The aim experiment campaign, called DOMEX-3, is to collect a series of brightness temperature measurements over two years that can be compared with the data from SMOS. This is to verify that the sensor on the satellite remains properly calibrated.

Briefing before the instrument was installed on the tower. (IFAC)

This delicate operation is being carried out at the Dome-C Italian–French base at Concordia, which is on East Antarctica’s polar plateau – about 3280 m above sea level and about 1000 km from the coast. To be precise, the exact coordinates are: 75°06’06’’S latitude, 123°23’42’’E longitude!

The Radomex instrument was lifted onto the tower with an hydraulic boom. (IFAC)

It is bitterly cold; the average temperature throughout the year is almost –50.8° C (–30° C in summer and –60° C in winter). The annual (solid) precipitation is in the order of 2–10 mm (snow water equivalent): which at a typical mean surface density of 300 kg/m3is equal to an annual accumulation of about 3.7 cm/yr. 

The Radomex instrument installed on the tower. It is looking skywards for calibration. (IFAC)

This extraordinary natural laboratory attracts scientists of all over the world, particularly for astronomical, seismological and atmospheric research.

The DOMEX-3 campaign, is being conducted by an Italian team from the Institute of Applied Physics ‘Nello Carrara’–CNR Florence, Italy, which I lead. The campaign is also supported by ESA and by the Italian Programme of National Research in Antarctica (PNRA).

The instrument we’re using is an improved version of the Radomex radiometer built by IFAC-CNR’s which was used successfully in 2008–2010.

The newly-designed Radomex radiometer will be able to operate autonomously; remotely transmitting data daily to Europe.

Simone Pettinato (IFAC-CNR) and Fabiano Monti (SLF-DAVOS) got to the base on 20 November 20 after travelling for around 10 days. Their route was Italy to New Zealand on a normal schedule flight, then from New Zealand on a C-130 which landed on the ice platform of Terra Nova Bay Antarctica  thus a Twin-Otter up to Concordia. They were welcomed by a temperature of –39.1 °C, but when you factor in the wind chill this is almost –51°C!

Close-up of the instrument on the tower. The circular area corresponds to the aperture of the L-band antenna. (IFAC)

Their first days were spent assembling the instrument, which had been shipped in several separate boxes  from Italy, and testing that it worked after its long trip.

On 2 December Simone and Fabiano installed the instrument on the US tower at an height of 15 m above the ground on a metallic interface and with a help of an hydraulic boom.

Testing demonstrated that the instrument is able to observe the ice sheet at different incidence angles and analysis of the preliminary data confirms that the instrument works properly and data are been acquired correctly.

They also dug several snow pits to collect physical data will be used to interpret microwave data.

Long snow trench for characterising physical snow properties. The trench was dug by hand by Fabiamo Monti and Elio Padoan in -35°C! (IFAC)

 The ground team left the base on 13 December to make their way back to Europe.

The instrument is now working autonomously, and transmitting data every day to Europe. During the forthcoming months the Radomex instrument will be monitored by Elio Padoan, a young scientist who will spend more than a year in this challenging environment!

 

Posted in From the ice | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Battling Arctic conditions for SnowSAR

Posted on 12/12/2012 by honora

From Chris Derksen (Environment Canada)  Inuvik, Canada

Although the schedule for the final preparations was very tight, activities are proceeding well for a SnowSAR flight in Canada.

Peter Toose and Arvids Silis stop for a break while en route from Inuvik to the study site. (Environment Canada)

Over the past week, scientists from Environment Canada have been in the field near Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. As expected, the environment near Inuvik in December has posed some challenges – the Sun does not rise above the horizon at any point in the day, so between 11:00 and 16:00 it’s just twilight. Temperatures have been very cold, not climbing above –30°C and reaching as low as –38°C.

In spite of these conditions, measurements are proceeding well – Lidar scans to determine snow depth along large snow drift features are complete. Transects of snow depth, density, snow stratigraphy and grain size, and surface roughness are ongoing.

Alex Coccia from MetaSensing preparing to setup a calibration target for the SnowSAR. (Environment Canada)

The scientists are based in a small cabin approximately 50 km from Inuvik, which provides them with quick snowmobile access to the study area. They are enjoying the rustic lifestyle!

Arvids Silis from Environment Canada preparing to take measurements with a ‘magnaprobe’ – an automatic snow depth measuring device equipped with a GPS. (Environment Canada)

The Cessna-208 aircraft arrived in Inuvik from Norman Wells yesterday afternoon. The rear baggage doors were removed in the evening, and replaced with specially designed doors that will house the SnowSAR instrument. Installation of the SAR is planned for this morning, and if weather conditions cooperate, the science flight will be conducted this afternoon.

The campaign supports the development of ESA's CoReH2O candidate Earth Explorer mission.

Posted in Campaigns | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Things hotting up for measuring snow mass

Posted on 03/12/2012 by honora

From Dirk (ESA), 3 December 2012

A few weeks ago we kicked off a series of campaigns to hopefully provide high-quality airborne data for the development of ESA's CoReH2O candidate Earth Explorer mission. This mission is currently undergoing feasibility study.

The campaigns are built around an airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) called SnowSAR, which measures in the X- and Ku-band frequencies. The instrument was developed by Metasensing NL. It is used to simulate the instrument that could be carried on the CoReH2O satellite.  

The major goal of these campaigns  is to map and monitor the mass of seasonal snow over different surfaces in the Austrian Alps and in Inuvik, Canada. This is done by using the SAR carried on an aircraft and also taking measurements on ground. The fact that these campaigns can be conducted is thanks to co-funding from national bodies in Austria, Canada and the US and because everyone involved is willing to work on very flexible schedules.

Campaigns such as these always pose logistical challenges. The first, in this case, was a question of instrument availability. Since there was only one instrument available, and had to come up with a plan on how to ship the instrument between the Netherlands, Austria and Canada in the winter period.  

In October, the instrument was shipped to Canada and installed in a Cessna C-208 aircraft. For this purpose one of the doors was modified, which also involved ground and flight tests to ensure the aircraft’s airworthiness.

Cessna 208 with adapted door so that the instrument could be fitted.

The procedure went smoothly thanks to the efforts of the team in Canada and Metasensing. After a week in Canada we were able to ship the instrument back to the Netherlands and start the preparations for the flights in Austria.

In the meantime, the ground teams in Innsbruck, Austria, had prepared for the related ground measurements.

Checking temperature sensors, drilled into the ice of Mittelbergferner glacier in preparation for the AlpSAR campaign. (ENVEO)

We scheduled the first flight in Austria for the week starting 19 November. The aircraft had arrived two days earlier and the crew carried out the first test flights. Everything seemed to be perfect, including the weather and we planned the first real flight to go ahead on the Tuesday.

Early Tuesday morning, the ground teams left to make measurements in different valleys, including an Alpine glacier.

Snow pit on Mittelbergferner glacier – to measure vertical profiles of snow density, grain size and structure, and snow temperature. (ENVEO)

The aircraft took off but the crew realised very quickly that the Global Positioning System on board wasn’t working properly. So, they had to return to the airport and tried to fix the problem. It turned out that the GPS had to be replaced. The crew shipped in a new GPS unit on the same day and  installed it on the Wednesday morning. After some checks on ground the aircraft took off again and took all the measurements needed for the day.

In the evening, we all met and everyone was really pleased that everything worked on the ground and on the aircraft. There was even some time to visit the Christmas market in Innsbruck on Thursday morning before packing up.

We met again on Friday to ship the instrument to Canada, which should arrived by 11 December to perform measurements in Inuvik.

The ground teams in Canada are now preparing and facing up to the challenge of working in the dark and in temperatures around down to –30°C.

Over the coming months we will keep you updated on progress and also let the different teams introduce themselves.

Posted in Campaigns, From the ice | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Meet ESA, the space agency for Europe

Posted on 31/10/2012 by Daniel

You, together with your 500 million fellow citizens from ESA's 20 European member nations, are the collective owners of one of the world's leading space agencies. The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organisation, a cooperative coming together of its Member States in their national interest and common good. This new video offers a quick introduction: Europe, meet ESA.

Posted in News and updates | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The secret light of plants

Posted on 21/09/2012 by honora

From the HyFLEX campaign team, 21 September

Over the last few weeks we’ve been on campaign trying to catch what someone once described as 'the secret light of plants'.

The previous blog entries on the HyFLEX campaign give you some idea of what we’ve been doing out in the field to support the development of candidate Earth Explorer mission called FLEX.

This entry should help describe why we are taking the measurements.

HyFLEX campaign (ESA)

The basic mechanism is that through the process of photosynthesis, plants use the energy in sunlight and convert it into chemical energy to grow. They absorb visible light, but a small part of this energy is emitted again in the red and near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, plants absorb one colour and emit another – in the form of fluorescence.

Measurements of fluorescence, therefore, could be used as an indicator of photosynthetic activity. The aim of the candidate FLEX mission is to provide global maps of vegetation fluorescence to improve our understanding of how global change is affecting the health of our plants.

The problem is that we can’t see fluorescence because the red light reflected from the Sun is stronger than that of fluorescence and, of course, our eyes are not able to see in the near-infrared. This is why people call it the ‘secret light’.

But the good news is that there are ways to ‘see’ it and measure it, which is what we’ve been trying to do in the campaign.

The concept of the FLEX mission is to measure fluorescence from space without needing an active system, just using sunlight. To do this a very sensitive instrument is needed. As part of the development process, we have to check that this can first be done from the air with the appropriate instrumentation. For this reason FZ-Juelich in Germany with SPECIM in Finland developed the HyPlant sensor. In principle HyPlant spans the scales from single leaves (cm resolution, when used on ground) to the ecosystem using it from an airborne plattform.

So here we are, with the HyPlant sensor placed in an aircraft and additional instruments on the ground to check that what we get from the airborne sensor, flying at 600 m, are really measuring the secret light of plants.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, you can have a look at one of the first picture taken. In the image above (A) and (B) give a true and false colour image of an agricultural area in Germany.

As a first step, one can calculate the ‘normalised difference vegetation index’ (NDVI), which is a simple indicator for how green the vegetation in the image is (C). This information can already be used to estimate canopy chlorophyll content.

From (D) one gets an impression of what it looks like inside the aircraft and how the sensor is mounted.

In the meantime we gathered a huge amount of data and during the coming months the team will analyse them in greater detail and everyone will look at vegetation reflectance spectra (E), showing the high spectral resolution of the fluorescence module (0.25 nm spectral resolution under flight conditions), which allows the exact detection of Sun-induced fluorescence.

Again, we want to give a big thanks to all the teams and people who contributed to this campaign and hope we will get the first results soon.

Posted in Campaigns | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tales from a cherry picker

Posted on 12/09/2012 by honora

From Roberto Colombo (University of Milan, Italy), 12 September

We’ve just been working out in the Czech Republic to help with the development of a concept for a candidate Earth Explorer mission called FLEX. The HyFLEX field campaign tests the mission’s measurement concept – and some of these measurements have to be taken from a cherry picker over the forest canopy.

The cherry picker lifts you high above the forest. (ESA)

The cherry picker ‘T148 MP 27’ is a hydraulic work platform truck that was manufactured by Tatra at the beginning of 1970 in Kopøivnice, in what was Ceskoslovenska Republika.

It was originally red and white, with three yellow arms. Now scattered with spots of rust, this machine has had a long life working in the field. The basket at the end of the last arm is about 170×60 cm, which is the minimum area that fits our instrument – a spectroradiometer for measuring radiance and brand new white reference panel. The white of the panel contrasts strongly with the rusty orange drum.

We carefully assembled tripods and tools and jumped into the basket, ready to take off over the forest.

Joseph, the Tatra operator on the ground, was ready to raise us into the sky. He quickly moved the arms; first the biggest one, then the middle one and then the little one to take us up and over the forest. Although we are secured by a harness  it felt pretty unstable. Everything shakes and one of the white panel’s screws comes off (which we hadn’t fixed) suddenly flipped 180°. Never mind, everything was ok and we had to move the basket horizontally over the forest to look for a good position to take our measurements.

Suspended about 25 m above the ground and about 7 m above the forest, the world is wonderful – we felt like we were floating and breathing different air. The view was beautiful, like a sea of green and we could see the tower, which is also used in the campaign, reaching high above the forest.

On our way down back to Earth! (ESA)

The space we have to work in was very small but the time passed quickly as we concentrated on our job until late afternoon. Then Joseph takes over and in a few seconds we were back on the ground.

It was an unforgettable experience!

Posted in Campaigns | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

HyFLEX: above the forest

Posted on 06/09/2012 by honora

From Dirk Schuettemeyer (ESA) & Uwe Rascher (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Germany, 5 September

A closer look at the datasets we had gathered in Germany confirmed that these first measurements were fine so we decided to carry on with the next phase of the campaign and move on to the Czech Republic.

Luis Alonso from the Spanish team taking measurements. (ESA)

So, as of 30 August we have been in the Beskids mountains just on the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We first had to set up all instruments in the forest to measure the more complicated fluorescence signal that comes from the trees’ pine needles in this hilly terrain. 

The Czech team starting to climb.

The main challenge for the airborne measurements is that the instrument doesn’t just see the upper needles, but also the lower ones and we don’t know exactly how this will look from above.

The other challenge is that the people have to measure in and above the forest.

The tower.

Taking the instruments from the plane is relatively straight forward compared to taking measurements from the ground. We have to use a tower 40 m high and a cherry picker. The first few days were spent installing the different instruments on the tower and on the cherry picker, which was really hard work.

Installing the instrument on top of the tower.

By Monday 3 September, we were ready and hoped to have the first test flight. We had a bit of a hiccup as we then discovered that we couldn’t fly over Slovakia as we didn’t have permission to take any pictures over the country. These things happen and a solution was quickly found and after a couple of hours the plane took off.

The Italian team operating their instrument above the forest.

Posted in Campaigns, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

HyFLEX: a new magnifying glass for plant activity

Posted on 05/09/2012 by honora

From Dirk Schuettemeyer (ESA) & Uwe Rascher (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Germany, 5 September

For the last two weeks we have been following the HYFLEX campaign 2012, which started in an area in western Germany between Bonn, Cologne and Aachen.

The aim of the campaign is to use, for the first time, a novel airborne sensor called HyPlant, which was developed by the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany and the Finnish company Specim.

One of the fields where many ground measurements were taken. (ESA)

The campaign will hopefully provide valuable information on the capabilities of a new Earth observation satellite mission concept called FLEX and will help ESA and collaborating scientists in the design of the mission.

The HyPlant instrument can be regarded as a camera that measures more wavelengths (colours) than our eyes can see. The aims is to use this instrument tomeasure vegetation fluorescence, which can be converted into an indicator of photosynthetic activity.

To begin with, we want to look at simple plants such as grass and sugar beet. The scientists involved in the campaign already know a lot about the behaviour  of these planets from ground measurements. However, they have never taken measurements using an airborne instrument.

The actual quantification of canopy fluorescence is still a challenge and, thus, researchers from nine European countries (Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Czech Republic, Spain, Finland, Luxemburg, Italy and France) have met up to carry out his campaign.  If successful, the scientists will be able to determine how healthy plants are and potentially the rate of carbon fixation.

Group discussion close to the main fields. The picture was taken from a small tower, which was used later to take measurements. (ESA)

 They are using  a wide array of instruments to measure sun-induced fluorescence from the level of single leaves up to the airborne sensor, including a detailed characterisation of the atmosphere.

The logistics of working with an international team can be a challenge. For example, to correctly capture the dynamic changes in plants all the computer clocks had to be adjusted. This little thing could cause a person from Italy sitting in front of a German computer trying to find out what ‘daylight saving time’ means in German.

The most interesting part of the campaign is the new airborne sensor, which provides unprecedented spectral resolution. The sensor was first tested in Finland and then shipped to Luxemburg for installation and certification. On Monday 20 August, the sensor and all the ground teams arrived in the campaign area and briefings and preparations started.

Despite the fact that a dense network of infrastructure had to be installed, all the teams worked efficiently and we could carry out the first test measurements in reasonable weather by  the Wednesday. Most of the measurements worked fine and we could optimise the measurement protocol and decided for an ambitious measurement day on the Thursday.

The weather forecast for Thursday was ideal, however we experienced some high cumulus clouds in the morning. Nevertheless, we decided to start as planned at 11:00 local time and our airplane took off to have a look at the plants from above. Fortunately, the  weather improved and around noon we had almost perfect blue skies. The weather remained good so we could gather a potentially excellent dataset, covering time series of various types of vegetation.

The Italian team measuring plant activity in a sugar beet field.

The ground teams’ work was also exceptional and were able to record all the necessary ground data to check if the new sensor really worked. It was really impressive to see all the groups on ground, measuring with different instruments. They even used  small quadrocopters that flew up to 100 m to get an estimate of the plants’ temperature.

It is simply fascinating how well and smoothly the expertise of the contributing groups merged into an orchestrated field campaign, promising a novel experimental dataset on fluorescence. We are looking forward to seeing the data and first ‘quick looks’.

We would greatly want to thank all the teams and people, who contributed to this measurement day. As a next challenge, the whole team will move to the Czech Republic to acquire the first flight lines over natural forest and where ground data will be much harder to gather.

Posted in Campaigns | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Reflecting on the C-MapExp campaign

Posted on 22/08/2012 by honora

From Bruno Neininger (Metair Switzerland), 20 August

I’m on the train from Cologne back to Zurich; quite happy and relaxed since the first part of the C-MapExp campaign was very successful.

A week ago, most partners only knew each other from phone calls and emails. As usual before a campaign starts, the focus was on the ‘dirty five’, where one of these issues is sufficient to be a show-stopper: Is the aircraft ready? Is the instrumentation ready? Is the crew ready? What is the weather outlook? And, finally, are all logistical aspects, including administration, sufficiently clear? All of them tried to challenge us a little bit, but, behaved quite merciful.

When we first met Sunday evening after the ferry flights to Dinslaken airfield (EDLD) – the coordinator from ESA, three colleagues from Bremen, one from Berlin and three from METAIR – the weather outlook was optimistic for Monday, and the real weather was even better (more or less clear blue skies for the remote sensing).

That's how it continued day by day, with one or two flights per day, sitting as long as five hours side-by-side in the narrow cabin of METAIR-DIMO aircraft (www.metair.ch), the catering consisting of Swiss chocolate (in different physical conditions), cereal bars, and water.

Compared to other campaigns such as those over the Atlantic coast, we could not claim that these flights above the ‘Ruhrgebiet’ were very scenic, however, they were very impressive in a different way. Seeing distant chimneys from coal power plants and industry, while getting their emissions in realtime on the operator's screen, was fascinating. Even more fascinating were invisible sources which showed up surprisingly; very often first in the nose and then on screen. It's definitely not Alpine air up there!

The daily highlight certainly was that the basic idea of the campaign turned out to work. The ‘targets’ (sources of the greenhouse gases CO2 and/or CH4) could be characterised simultaneously both by the remote sensing Cessna flying at altitudes up to 3000 m (FL100), and our DIMO performing the in-situ measurements at lower altitudes between 150 and 800 m above the ground.

Especially last Sunday, with surface temperatures rising as high as 38 °C, we enjoyed the soundings up to 1500 m, dreaming of climbing higher in the cold. However, since this campaign is serious scientific work, we stayed in ‘our plumes’ and looked forward to a cool beer in the evening with our new colleagues and discussing the results of the day, and an outlook.

In short, this was a fantastic campaign with a dream team. Since perhaps next Thursday, a continuation will be possible, we hope that ‘Murphy’ stays on holiday far away from the Ruhrgebiet.

In the meantime, we will have a closer look at the data, which was checked daily in terms of health and completeness. Now we will recall the highlights which were visible on the realtime screen, and try to generate quantitative numbers about the source strengths of some strong emitters to provide these in-situ estimates for intercomparisons.

Bruno Neininger, approaching Freiburg.

 

 

Posted in Campaigns | Leave a comment

Nothing but blue skies

Posted on 21/08/2012 by honora

Dirk (ESA) Dinslaken, Germany, 18 August

The weather forecast predicted perfect weather with blues skies and temperatures up to 40°C for the weekend. With everybody heading to the open air pool we were happy to stay and perform the measurements for the C-MapExp campaign in optimal conditions.

We had already flown over mining areas power plants in the vicinity in the last days. For then hoped to extend the flights to also fly over landfill sites and have a closer look at a new power plant which was officially commissioned this week.

Several power plants as seen from the aircraft window

Today, the team just got back from flying more than eight hours in total. Even Dave Oldani, who is also a aerobatic pilot was exhausted after these long flights.  Check out what he does in his free time on Youtube!

 

Of course, flying here must seem to be a bit boring compared to all the manoeuvres he can do, but it’s brilliant to have experienced pilots who communicate well with each other and also with other pilots in a region were the air traffic is very dense.

Dave is also an engineer working for the Solar Impulse project, which deals with building  a long-range solar powered aircraft that doesn’t use any fuel.

We celebrated that he has flown 1000 hours, so congratulations again Dave!

Dave Oldani amd Bruno Neininger on the Diamond Dimona after arriving at the airport in Dinslaken

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment