Author Archive

20070426 Flight Status

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

From Bob Wells (FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager)

The highlight of the day was the unexpected and very good news circulated by Peter that IASI instrument is now expected to be working again on Friday 27th.

The bad news was that the weather caused the cancellation of the proposed science flight. Further, following a lighning alert at the airfield, Directflight considered that the aircraft was at risk of damage from a storm as it passed Ellington Field and, in the absence of any request for science data, made a crew-only ‘escape’ flight of just under 3 hours.

No flying on Thursday.

From Bill Smith (WB-57 NAST-I/S-HIS Scientist):

Flight Opportunities for Next Week:

29 Apr (Sun Night): 1930 takeoff, Central Gulf underflight of MetOp at 2205 (0305 UTC). (Will not be flown if Sunday-day mission flies)

 

30 Apr (Mon Night): 1900 takeoff, Eastern Gulf underflight of MetOp at ~2145 (0245 UTC)

or

1 May (Tue Day: 0915 takeoff, CART-site underflight of MetOp at 1147 (1647 UTC).) (Will not be flown if Monday-night mission flies.)


2 May (Wed-Day) 1015 takeoff, CART- underflight of MetOp at 1126 (1626 UTC) and Aqua at 1452 (1952 UTC).

or

2 May (Wed-Night) 2015 takeoff, Gulf- underflight of MetOp at 2242 (0342 UTC) and Aqua at 0256 (0756 UTC) or CART-Site underflight of MetOp at 2245 (0345 UTC) (Will not be flown if Wed-day mission flies).

3 May (Thur-Day) 0845 takeoff, Gulf underflight of MetOp at 1107 (1607 UTC). (Will not be flown if Wed-night mission flies).

or

3 May (Thur-Night) 2030 takeoff, CART-site underflight of MetOp at 2224 (0324 UTC). (Will not be flown if Thur-day mission flies.)

4 May (Fri-Day) 0945 takeoff, Gulf underflight of MetOp at 1047 (1547 UTC) and Aqua at 1437 (1937UTC). (Will not be flown if Thur-night mission flies.)

20070425 Flight Status

Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

From Bob Wells (FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager)

B286, a night flight with the WB57 over the Gulf started the day. This underflew the A-Train (AQUA, CALYPSO and CLOUDSAT satellite formation) in broken cloud conditions. The cirrus was above 35000feet so the BAE146 could not get in situ data.

The rest of the day was spent recovering from nocturnal activity and planning a FAAM (only) daytime flight for Wednesday for the Gulf of Mexico AQUA pass.

20070423 Flight Status

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

From Bob Wells (FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager)

The disappointment over the problems with METOP (IASI is now expected to return to operation late on Monday 30th April) have been counterbalanced by some excellent results from the first flight. Raw radiances and retrieved values have generally compared very well indeed.

Tuesday’s flight (takes off 2320L Monday) in conjunction with the WB57 is targetting cloud observations under an A-train overpass (AQUA, CLOUDSAT and CALYPSO satellites).

A daytime AQUA flight, including a WB57 wing-tip to wing-tip (the WB57 has very long wings) intercomparison, has been pencilled in for Wednesday but current forecasts make this look unlikely to go ahead.

From Bill Smith (WB-57 NAST-I/S-HIS Scientist):

Below is a report that EUMETSAT issued on their web-page earlier today. We will discuss what strategy we should follow for this weeks flights, in view of the MetOp situation, at 2:00 PM today . Your input is appreciated.

We are flying an A-train cloud mission tonight (i.e.,early tomorrow). We will be under-flying the Calypso/CloudSat track (180 nm) until overpass time after which we will fly a rectangular area (100 nm segments) surrounding the A-train ground tracks. BAe-146 will be providing dropsondes, plus other in-situ and radiometric data, along all flight segments. Weather looks good for this cloud mission.

April 23, 2007
Switch-off of Metop-A Payload Module
On Friday 20/4/2007 at 10:14 UTC (12:14 Local), the Metop-A satellite experienced a total switch-off of the Payload Module for no apparent reason. This occurred during a routine Svalbard pass, therefore in visibility.

The root cause triggering this event is not known at time of writing, but the analysis of the available telemetry by the experts seems to point towards a software problem in the Payload Module Computer (PMC) software. The status of all instruments on-board Metop-A was assessed and their safe condition confirmed by the experts.

As a consequence of this payload switch-off, the dissemination of Metop-A products was halted after the last valid orbit. The operational users were informed immediately of the service interruption.

The PMC software was analysed in the mean time and the go-ahead for the restart of the Payload Module Computer software was given. This restart is scheduled for the 23 April a.m. The instruments would then be progressively switched back on in the coming days, as soon as possible.

20070422 Flight Status

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

From Bill Smith (WB-57 NAST-I/S-HIS Scientist)

WB-57 Flight Schedule

23 Apr (Mon/Tue Night) 0030 takeoff (30 minutes into tuesday), Gulf underflight of Aqua at ~3 AM LDT (0800 UTC)

24 Apr (Tue) No flight

25 Apr (Wed-Day) 1215 takeoff, CART-site or Gulf underflight of Aqua at ~2:45PM LDT (19:45 UTC)

26 Apr (Thu) No flight

27 Apr (Fri-Day) 1015 takeoff, CART-site with underflight of MetOp at ~11:30 LST (16:30 UTC) and underflight of Aqua at ~2:30 LDT (19:30 UTC)

28 Apr (Sat-Day) 0840 takeoff CART-site or Gulf (preferred, but weather dependent) underflight of MetOp at ~11:10 CDT (16:10 UTC)

29 Apr (Sun-Day) 0945 takeoff Gulf underflight of MetOp at 10:50 AM (15:50 UTC) and underflight of Aqua at 2:20 PM (19:20 UTC)

20070421 Flight Status

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

From Bob Wells (FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager)

The science team had a long session to discuss possible operations without METOP next week and several instrumental and data odds and ends were addressed.

Saturday is a “Hard Down” day with no access to the aircraft.

20070420 Science Update

Friday, April 20th, 2007

From Jonathan Taylor (AIRES Scientist PI):

With the ongoing problems with IASI I wanted to cheer everyone up with news of the excellent data we have gathered so far.

The FAAM BAe146 and the WB-57 have conducted two excellent flights coordinated with the Metop satellite.

The first flight took place coincident with the 0335Z 19th April 2007 overpass of Metop overhead the DoE ARM site in Oklahoma. It was a night time flight and the sub-satellite track of IASI was within 2nm of the ARM central facility. The weather conditions were excellent with totally cloud free conditions prevailing during the flight. The WB57 flew the NAST-I, NAST-M and S-HIS instruments operating at 57,000ft flying a pattern up and down the sub-satellite track. At the same time the BAE146 flew runs at 4000ft (the lowest permitted altitude in that area at night time) and profiled up to 30,000ft before flying at 30,000ft along the sub-satellite track exactly at the overpass. During the overpass time all instruments worked well and the BAe146 launched 11 dropsondes to characterise the temperature and water vapour column. In addition the BAe146 measured the ozone and carbon monoxide profiles in the area. The extremely good coincidence of the WB-57 data and the BAe146 along with the valuable data from the ARM site will make this an invaluable data set for validating the performance of IASI. The atmospheric structure was complex with a moist but cloud free boundary layer – a real challenge for radiometer retrievals.

The second flight took place over the Gulf of Mexico to the South East of New Orleans coincident with the 03:11Z 20th April 2007 overpass of Metop. The FAAM Bae146 took off from Houston and landed briefly at New Orleans to refuel allowing maximum endurance over the area of interest for the overpass time. The WB-57 operated again at 57,000ft with the NAST-I, S-HIS and NAST-M instruments. The BAE146 started the scientific sortie with two runs at 1000ft above the ocean each of 50mins duration. It was a night flight again and the only visible features were the hundreds of oil rigs with their flares and lighting illuminating the ocean surface like a Christmas tree. During these low level runs the ARIES instrument on the BAE146 was used to measure the sea surface temperature which is highly variable in this area showing marked step changes of 1 degree or more over very short distances. The ARIES instrument was also used to measure the down welling radiation at this level which helped with the characterisation of the atmosphere. These measurements of the downwelling radiance spectra, which we could look at in detail during the flight, showed the presence of scattered cumulus, altostratus and cirrus at the Southern end of the run whilst the northern end of the run was totally cloud free. Following the low level runs the BAe146 profiled up through the atmosphere to 33,000ft measuring the state of the atmosphere. The thermodynamic structure was very unusual. The boundary layer was moist up to around 5500ft and then we entered a particularly dry layer with dewpoint depressions approaching 60 degrees Celsius. At 23000ft we entered a moist layer with dew point depressions of only 2 to 5 degrees but there was no cirrus detected by any of the instruments. This very moist layer was 10,000ft thick and it was only at the very top of the layer that we found the cirrus cloud. I have never seen such a deep moist layer at high altitudes without there being cirrus present. During the satellite overpass run the BAE146 and WB-57 flew coordinated runs backwards and forwards along the sub-satellite track. The BAe146 launched 11 dropsondes with 4 dropsondes staggered vertically through the atmosphere at the exact overpass time. All of these dropsondes showed very consistent thermodynamic structure. Whilst at high level the Bae146 sometimes penetrated thin cirrus clouds allowing the microphysics to be characterised. ARIES spectra looking down through the atmosphere showed that the lower level cloud observed earlier had moved away. We will have to look carefully at the Metop data but it is likely that there will mainly be thin cirrus in the IASI fov but we hope that some of the breaks are large enough for clear sky spectra to be measured. All in all this was an excellent flight with some very interesting data from the WB57 and the Bae146 which should keep us busy for some time.

We are all now busy analysing these data and hope to be able to circulate some initial intercomparisons between Metop and the airborne interferometers sometime over the weekend.

Despite the news that Metop has had some difficulties spirits remain high and everyone awaits the return of a fully functional IASI in order that we can go out and gather some more data.

In the meantime we are considering doing a coordinated flight of the WB57 and BAe146 to look at sub-tropical cirrus in coordination with the Aqua satellite, Calipso and Cloudsat (the A-train).

20070420 Flight Status

Friday, April 20th, 2007

From Bob Wells FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager:

Flight B285 to observe the METOP overpass over the Gulf of Mexico with the NASA WB57 was billed as FAAM’s first attempt at a 3-sector science flight and had taken a lot of effort to set up. Two refuelling stops were arranged at New Orleans.

The science work along the sub-orbital track was very interesting and successful.
12 dropsondes worked well (minor problems with a couple). Some areas were clear sky and in other places there were scattered clouds of various types. Steep sea-surface temperature gradients were observed at one point and some in-situ cloud physics data was recorded so, altogether, this should produce an extremely valuable IASI validation dataset.

There was just enough fuel remaining at the end of the (slightly-modified) science flying to recover directly to Ellington and so avoid a second refuel at New Orleans.

Soon after the team had hit the sack came news of a major problem with the METOP satellite and Principal Investigator Jonathan Taylor was woken by a call from EUMETSAT.

At the time of writing (1700Z 20th April) it sounds as though IASI will be out of action for something like a week. This is likely to reduce the amount of flying FAAM attempts in this period but there are possibilities of work with the Houston Plume and with the AQUA satellite.

Hopefully there will be a clearer programme to present to the team at the hotel at 1800L meeting on Sunday.

19 April 2007 Flight Status

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

From Allen Larar NAST-I Scientist

We are flying a mission tonight over the OK CART site region, coordinated
with the Metop 0335 GMT (19 Apr) overpass. RTB between 1-2 AM expected.

I will be leaving town for a few days; outlook for the next several
days is as follows:

19 Apr (Thurs) 7:15 PM (local) takeoff (night flight; Metop; GOM)

20 Apr (Fri) no flight
21 Apr (Sat) down day
22 Apr (Sun) down day

23 Apr (Mon) possible day *or* night flight (night most likely)
24 Apr (Tue) possible day *or* night flight (night most likely)

25 Apr (Wed) no flight
26 Apr (Thu) no flight

27 Apr (Fri) day flight
28 Apr (Sat) possible day *or* night flight
29 Apr (Sun) day flight

From Bob Wells FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager

Flight B284 took off into the setting sun and was joined by the NASA WB57 for a very successful sortie with clear skies over the Oklahoma ARM site and under the METOP satellite.

Another night flight (i.e. no SWS or video cameras!) has been planned for Thursday night - Friday morning with two refuelling stops in New Orleans. This will observe the METOP pass over the Gulf of Mexico.

Saturday has been declared a hard down day and there will be no flying on Sunday.

18 April 2007 Flight Status Update

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

From Bob Wells FAAM BAE Flight Operations Manager

Tuesday was a no-fly day.

The SATCOM phone problem was raised with the service provider, Stratos, but as yet there is no indication that it has been fixed.

A lot of planning was undertaken in an attempt to exploit the 2007/04/19 03:35Z METOP pass directly over the ARM ground observatory. Three possible sorties have been devised and the decision on which one of these to fly will be taken by Houston noon Wednesday in light of the latest cloud forecasts. All three briefs involve a landing in the wee small hours of Thursday.

Partly as a consequence of this Stuart Newman will be investigating the possibilities of another overnight METOP mission Thursday-Friday night which may involve a refuel (possibly at Mobile, Alabama).

It is highly probable that Saturday and Sunday will be declared ‘down days’ so avoiding many constraints on the programme from crew-hour limitation considerations. There will be no suitable satellite passes on these days and wind forecasts do not look good for another Houston Plume jaunt.

DOE ARM SGP Radiosondes now available (@ METOP/AQUA Overpass Times)

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

Radiosondes are available within link on Data Archive at:

ftp://ftp.ssec.wisc.edu/validation/exper/jaivex/sondes