Our second flight took us south of Kiruna over land before heading towards Pallas, where a Cloudnet station is located.This is great as we can compare the measurements from the Cloudnet station with our airborne measurements, which is good for validation. Science can be so nice! Although we were not entirely sure if we would find many clouds along our flight path before takeoff, we actually had a very interesting case with lots of clouds and also clear sky conditions. The EarthCARE match took place when there were only a few clouds and some snow on the surface, which is very interesting for the validation. So we managed to fly the EarthCARE track right during a nice transition from cloudy to clear sky conditions. This time Mika was very interested in what the spectrometers measured during our flight. Feeling a little tired, Mika made himself comfortable on Christian’s shoulder, curious about what he was doing—or maybe just wanting a better view out the window. All in all, it was a pleasant flight with some lovely clouds and beautiful views out the window!

Next up: tomorrow’s flight towards the Norwegian coast—low-level cloud conditions are looking promising again, so stay tuned!