Today’s flight planning and go or no-go decision have not been easy. The overall situation has been similar to yesterday’s with haze all over Northern Sweden and Finland and the area around Kiruna airport showing a sunny sky with broken low-level clouds only, but with a forecast saying low visibility and difficult landing conditions throughout the day. After long discussions, we decided to go for a short survey, staying local to test different settings for GRaWAC to sense the low-level haze.
Up in the air, we tried different settings with the radars to see which works best with the thin haze. Although the haze was very thin and the ground was visible, both got a signal from time to time. To get an idea of temperature and humidity stratification, two dropsondes have been launched.
High pressure conditions gave us wonderfully sunny and crisp winter weather this weekend, but also made all the clouds disappear! We decided to target forecasted haze conditions towards Finland around Sodankylä to test our new radar GRaWAC’s sensitivity limits. Good news: higher sensitivity to detect thin layers of cloud and haze, even close to the surface, compared to our existing cloud radar MiRAC! With today’s tests, we are optimistic that we will be able to detect Arctic haze over sea ice conditions around Svalbard, our survey area for upcoming campaigns where low-level haze is crucial for radiation characteristics. The fog today was mysterious – it looked like thicker clouds from far away, but once we reached the decks, conditions were such as seen below in the photo: we could see through it easily down to the ground. Our radar detected a 30m thickness.
haze conditions as seen between Kiruna and the waypoint which we headed to
We are making use of the weekend to plan upcoming flights for next week, and to start off with some coding to analyze first data measured on Friday. A high pressure system has been hanging around for a few days around, making the sky wonderfully blue without a single cloud in the vicinity of Kiruna.
Today, we took off at 10 am for the first survey flight over Bothnian bay – GRaWAC’s, our new G-band radar system’s, first time in the air! Fair weather conditions over the bay and great conditions for emissivity measurements over the frozen, clear-sky Northern bay part. Clouds were scarce, but once we reached open ocean, we started seeing them from the window, and in our radar measurements, well organized.
Cables, converters, bellypod, racks, seat plan, dropsonde launcher, calibration, ground test, documentation, certification, metric or imperial … … … curious to learn more about how integration looks like?
Together with the AWI engineers and KennBorek mechanic, we started installing our instruments aboard the Polar-6 aircraft in the hangar at Bremen airport. Generally, the instruments need to be installed securely aboard the aircraft according to the campaign specific cabin layout. Microwave radiometer and lidar are installed in the cabin with a lookout through the belly, while both cloud radars are attached below the plane in a bellypod.
Last week, Kerstin and Vera participated in the joint CFMIP-GASS* meeting in Paris. Apart from presentations and discussions about clouds, convection, circulation, and climate sensitivity, we even participated (virtually) in the Tour de France during the lunch break!
*CFMIP: Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project & GASS: Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX)’s Global Atmospheric System Studies
As we reported earlier in this blog, we participated in the airborne field campaign HALO-(AC)³ In March and April 2022. The goal of the campaign was to improve the understanding of the airmasses transformation when transported into or out of the Arctic. Two types of airmass transports were of particular interest: First, moist and warm air intrusions that transport high amounts of heat and moisture from the mid-latitudes into the Arctic. Second, marine cold air outbreaks that lead to the formation of cloud streets and convective cells when cold and dry air from the central Arctic is transported southwards over the relatively warm North Atlantic. In our study, we analyse the weather (and sea ice) conditions during the HALO-(AC)³ campaign.
Map of the study area of the HALO-(AC)³ campaign including the flight tracks of the research aircraft HALO, Polar 5 (P5) and Polar 6 (P6). The study area has been separated into three subregions.
We separated the campaign into a warm and a cold period with the help of northwards humidity transport (IVT) and the so-called cold air outbreak index (MCAO index). The cold air outbreak indicates the strength of the temperature difference between the surface and the lower atmosphere. High differences suggest cold air outbreak conditions with strong interactions between the cold ocean and the atmosphere. The warm period was dominated by northward winds and warm air intrusions while the cold period featured several cold air outbreaks.
(a) Northward water vapour transport (IVTnorth) and (b) marine cold air outbreak (MCAO) index for the campaign duration in 2022 (black line). Grey shading indicates the climatology over the years 1979-2022. The red box shows the warm period, while the blue box illustrates the cold period.
During an extremely strong warm air intrusion, record breaking near-surface temperatures occurred in the central Arctic compared to the March 1979-2022 climatology. Also at Ny-Ålesund, the weather station recorded the highest near-surface temperatures for March since the beginning of the measurements in 1975. This warm air intrusion was detected as so-called Atmospheric River, a thin but long band of extremely strong moisture transport. Over the sea ice northwest of Svalbard, record breaking rainfall rates occurred.
Average 2 m temperature in March 2022 north of 80°N (red line). Thin black lines show the temperature for each year between 1979 and 2022 and the thick black line illustrates the average over those years.
At the beginning of the cold period, a strong cold air outbreak led to an extremely dry atmosphere over Ny-Ålesund with integrated water vapour content of just 1.1 kg m-2 (24 March 2022). Less than 3 % of all radiosondes launched since 1993 recorded drier conditions.
Humidity measurements from radiosondes (weather balloons) launched at Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard) during HALO-(AC)³. The colours indicate the specific humidity (fraction of water vapour mass to total air mass) while the black line shows the total humidity content of the troposphere (lowest layer of the atmosphere).
During the cold period, we also observed the Arctic version of a hurricane, a Polar Low. Polar Lows are characterised by convective (cumulus) clouds, relatively strong winds (at least gale force) and precipitation, while extending only over a few 100 kilometers. They also have a relatively cloud free centre like the eye of a hurricane. We analysed the environmental conditions for the formation of the Polar Low.
Photo taken from the research aircraft HALO during the flight to observe the Polar Low.
Luckily, the weather conditions were quite favourable to achieve the goals of the campaign because we could capture both types of airmass exchange between mid-latitudes and the Arctic. The publication has been submitted to the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The last few days were quite rough. After crossing the 40° S, we encountered a heavy storm shaking us thoroughly. It gave us wind speeds of up to 140km/h, 12m high waves and rolling the ship from side to side by nearly 45°. Everything on the ship had to be fastened to not go flying about and walking became a real challenge – not even to mention in a straight line.
Luckily the storm weakened after two days bringing the relieve of a good night of sleep again. With the ships movement during the storm even that became impossible, rolling us around in our beds, feeling weightless in one moment and three times heavier than normally in the next.
While we are now passing the Falkland Islands and approaching the Magellan Straight, plenty of wildlife is popping up: albatrosses and other flocks of birds have been accompanying the ship since yesterday and some lucky people even saw whales!
Apart from watching wildlife, we are kept busy with writing cruise reports, backing-up data and preparing the instruments for packing. Tomorrow we will reach Punta Arenas and are sad that the campaign is already over. It was great fun working together with the amazing crew of Maria S. Merian, with so many enthusiastic scientists from very different fields, taking measurements in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and especially very closely experiencing the features that we observed.
1. An albatross seen from the ship’s observation deck. (Picture by Daria Paul UoC)Meteorological situation while crossing the storm which had its strongest phase during the night between February 17 and February 18. (a) Air pressure (upper), temperature (middle) and wind speed (lower) measured by the on-board weather station. (b) Windspeed map from windy.de for the morning of February 18. The ship Maria S. Merian is marked by the white dot.
This week Mario and myself traveled to Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, to exchange our cloud radar MiRAC-A with the cloud radar JOYRAD94. Since MiRAC-A is needed for campaign preparations, it has to travel back to Germany. Swapping the instruments on the roof of the atmospheric observatory of AWIPEV (https://www.awipev.eu/) went very smoothly.
Crane operation to lift the cloud radar JOYRAD94 on top of the AWIPEV atmospheric observatory
Thanks also to the AWIPEV and Kingsbay support! What a wonderful place to do measurements!
