Good Views, But Not The Most Exciting Flight

On Sunday we stayed fairly local and flew out over Prince Edward Island and did some spirals around the area. The reason for this flight was that the Aura satellite (http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/) was doing a special overpass of the area. So we flew out over the ocean and since the sky was really clear did a spiral ascent and descent from 25,000 ft to 5,000 ft. From this we should have got some good data to compare with the satellite measurements. There were beautiful views of the island including one showing the clouds confined to the area above the land with totally clear skies over the sea.

We saw traces of a plume but whether it was from biomass burning or some other emissions we are not certain yet; concentrations of the typical tracers, acetonitrile, HCN, were not particularly high. After the flight we had a campaign photo taken, getting everyone together and organised was not an easy job and took a number of people quite some time. But when we got there the guy we asked to take the photo turned out to be a real David Bailey shooting from different directions, angles, even with diferent cameras...still not sure he got a good one...maybe I'll post one later on when I get the files.

Monday was a down day (no flying) with power to the aircraft so there was a small group of us on the aircraft making sure our instuments were working exactly as we wanted. We also had to change some gas cylinders as the plan for today and Wednesday was to fly to Thunder Bay, a double flight (8-10hrs) then stay overnight there and do more flying the next day. This meant that half empty gas cylinders would not last the duration.

Steve and Steph pose in laser goggles while Eleonora and I check the laser aligniment on the LIF

We have a full on sock monkey epidemic (if you don't know what I'm talking about this might help) here at the airport. It all started with the colourful fella in the picture below who has been posing around the aircraft. Then the discovery of a sock monkey shop in Halifax saw another one materialise (any chance of a photo Mike?). Another scientist has requested the ingredients from the aforementioned shop to enable him to create a masterpiece to take home for his girlfriend and a mascot for the aircraft has also been suggested.

Today was an early start with power on the aircraft at 5.30am. Towards the end of the warm up time the arrival of a camera man from the Discovery Channel Canada sparked a flurry of activity mounting a time lapse camera at the back of the aircraft and teaching James Lee to operate a camera for during today's flight. Shalini Punjabi, Guy Gratton and Paul Palmer were also interviewed. More filming will take place on landing tomorrow so keep your eye out for some BORTAS scientists starring on the small screen.

Filming the pre-flight briefing

Sharks With Lasers

And another update from the ground team, but this time about more social happenings.......

Post written by Keith Tereszchuk

Well I guess card sharks with LIDARS would be more accurate to describe the attendees of the very first event of the DGS Poker Tour.  Last Tuesday night saw some heated Texas Hold'em action at the Duck household as Tom was gracious enough to provide the venue for the inaugural event.  The evening saw yours truly up against some hard-nosed DGS rounders in a high stakes, 5¢/10¢ no-limit cash game with minimum $10 buy-in.  Tom established his table image early with his TAG (tight aggressive) style of play and took advantage of a hot run of cards to quickly become the chip leader at the table.  From there, he continued to bully and intimidate the table by constructing a formidable stack monster.

Tom proudly posing with his stack monster.

It was at this point that the game started to loosen up as 9-year old Thomas returned home from soccer to find that his kitchen table was the sight of an old-fashioned brick and mortar cash game.  Tom tried to dissuade his son from wanting to play by telling him that we were playing for real money, only to have Thomas immediately dash up the stairs to his room; and after a couple minutes of rummaging, returned to the table to present his father a huge handful of coins to pay for his buy-in.  Young Thomas was now set to endure his first trial by fire at the poker table.

Tom offering young Thomas some sage advice before playing his first hand.  Luiza looking upon her husband with a “I pray that Family and Children Services doesn't find out about this...” kinda look on here face.

Thomas played quite well for his first time and his father's tutelage shone through.  In fact, it was only after his second or third hand that Thomas picked up some pocket aces and went heads up with James (seen in the red shirt above) and raked in a huge pot such that he could make a stack monster of his own.

Stack monsters abound.

Sadly though, his good fortune did not last very long and it was his own father that felted the lad with an obvious smug grin of delight and satisfaction.  Unfazed and defiant, Thomas assured us that he would return to play with us next week for some more high-stakes action, ...right after he asks his dad for a raise in allowance.

Update from the Guys at DGS

Post written by Kaja Rotermund


Here at the DGS (Dalhousie Ground Station), our daily activities aren’t quite as adventurous as those for the Atmospheric Research Aircraft (ARA) and its flight crew, but we still have some exciting news to share. The most interesting of which is the data we were able to collect over the last few days (July17 – July21).  We were anticipating the arrival of boreal biomass plumes, but IASI Satellite images for the evening of July 20th indicated that it was possible the plumes would bypass us to the north completely. We were therefore pleasantly surprised and excited when the satellite images of the following morning showed a shift in direction of the plume, bringing it over Halifax. We got even more excited when our lidar plots showed high levels of backscatter congruent with dense plumes.  We observed the plume to be below 2km altitude and it stayed overhead for just about a full day. Due to the low altitude, we are very hopeful that the other instruments at DGS were also able to collect data for this event. When looking at the sky from Halifax at this time, a slight haze was definitely visible, which we are convinced must have been the extremely low aerosol plume.

The lidar recorded two sections in the plume. The first plume, which arrived shortly before midnight on the 20th was so dense that water vapor condensed onto the aerosol, forming a cloud. The aerosol is still visible along the outer edges of the cloud though. After a slight break in aerosol density at around 0800UTC, a second plume equally as dense, but with no cloud formation arrived. Unfortunately heavy clouds and fog rolled in after that making it necessary to shut down. Nevertheless, we are still very happy with the measurements we took and are looking forward to comparing our data with those of the other instruments on both the ground station and from the ARA.

Instrument Problems but Another Good Flight

Thursday 21st July, flight B624, and again we were chasing the smoke. This was Axel's last flight as flight manager and so he was aiming for the perfect score for flight quality in the debrief meeting. So far he has been given a 6.5, 7.5 and an 8 out of 10, a bit harsh considering they had a brilliant flight on Wednesday, but maybe it's because they had a power cut at Quebec. So we were aiming for the perfect 10, that elusive perfect flight.

That morning we had a visit from a journalist and a photographer from The Chronicle Herald who chatted to Paul for a while about what we were doing and took some pictures around the aircraft. This was then published on Friday morning on the online site at http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1254489.html.

Photograph from the piece on The Chronicle Herald website. Mike working hard on the CIMS instrument.

We took off just before 2pm local time a little early to give us more time for science. Pretty soon after take off, about 20 minutes or so it started to become apparent that this wouldn't be a perfect flight for me! The apparent NO2 concentration shot up but without a corresponding rise in the other channels, a clear indicator that something was wrong. I found a work around and carried on measuring but then about an hour and a half in, another channel, measuring the peroxyacyl nitrates (PANs), also went crazy. On inspection of the tubing connecting our heated inlet to the detection cells I discovered that the one to the PAN cell was full of condensation. Not good news! In the end the decision had to be made to disconnect the inlet and try to dry out the cells by flowing cabin air through. So the measurements made by our LIF instrument score about a 2/10 for this flight.

Thankfully other instruments were behaving better with some interesting shapes being seen in the carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone traces. It looked like we were seeing a really clear boundary between in plume measurements and those around the outside with ozone and CO often anti correlated and the high ozone correlated with nitrogen oxides. The step changes up and down as we flew into and out of the plume were quite striking so hopefully some good science there, just a shame we don't have the reactive nitrogen measurements from the LIF to back it up.

We had some problems with the ground power unit on landing at St John's for a refuel but on the fifth try we managed to get a unit that worked. Then after a short break and some refreshments we headed off again for a short flight back to Halifax. We encountered a plume as we flew out of St John's and another just before landing at Halifax. Debrief was done inflight and after some deliberation the flight was awarded a score of 9.5/10, much to the delight of Axel. Only the lack of LIF measurements lowered the score from the 10 we were hoping for, it was decided that since this was out of my control this must be the pilot's or mission scientist's fault for flying through such damp air. As we landed the rain was hammering down and there was a watefall pouring off the roof of the building. A bit of a damp ending but all in all, a good flight and hopefully sone good data.

Highest CO yet and smoke in the cabin!

Post by Andrew Rickard

Today the ARA flew two flights (B622 and B623) with a refuel in Quebec in order to intercept some intense plumes forcast nearer to the fire area of interest. B622 was flown as planned to the west then back into Quebec in excellent flying conditions. There was substantial evidence of biomass burning in discrete layers around 13-15,000 ft. Discrete thin layers of brown haze were clearly observable (picture to follow). We observed CO up to 1 ppmv in one layer, a new record! The Manchester CIMS and UEA PTRMS were also observing high levels of acetonitrile, a fairly unique tracer of biomass burning. At one point a distinct faint smell of woodsmoke was discernible within the cabin!

Between flights, the ground power to the aircraft in Quebec failed, and for a while it looked like we might have to cancel the second leg. However, with all hands to the pump and some quick thinking by the onboard scientists, disaster was avoided and the majority of the instruments were quickly back up and running close to normal, delaying departure by only 30 minutes. B623 original flight plan was altered owing to weather, returning (via US airspace to avoid a line of storm clouds and lightning strikes) to the Halifax area, with profile runs NW of Halifax in order to capture the extent of the biomass burning (BB) plume area. We then recieved some very interesting data from the Dalhousie LIDAR in downtown Halifax of an intense BB plume directly over Halifax itself. We quickly decided this was an opportunity not to be missed and so the quick thinking pilots performed spiral ascents and descents above Halifax up to 25,000ft in conjunction with Dalhousie Lidar (quite interesting for those onboard!). Both flights were highly successful and will deliver a multitude of science. It is credit to the enthusiasm and professionalism of both the full team on board G-LUXE (the code for the aircraft), and of the local Air Traffic Control Services in delivering a very high quality sortie despite substantial adverse factors.