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.
Next flight will be on Monday – stay tuned!
Research flight preparations have started!
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.
Time to celebrate! We received the great news that the CRC/TRR “Arctic Amplification (AC)³” will be funded by DFG for another 4 years (2024-2027). We are looking forward to continuing to do fascinating research in the high north!
Find below some press releases where you can read more about that:
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
In the last week of April, our group participated in the annual EGU General Assembly organized by the European Geosciences Union in Vienna. Around 19,000 geoscientists from 107 countries gathered at the conference to present their latest results. The more than 16,000 presentations covered Atmospheric, Climate, Cryospheric Science, and many more. Furthermore, there were symposia, short courses, and networking events.
For all of us, the EGU conference provided everything for fruitful discussions about our scientific work and potential collaborations. Besides science, it allowed us to meet many new people and friends from other institutes. And finally, Vienna treated us well with Austrian specialties such as Käsespätzle and Kaiserschmarrn during lunchtime.
If you ask a child to draw a scientist, they will usually draw a white man. Is it true that scientists are only white men? Somehow yes, still. Data show that after PhD level, the number of men continuing in academia is becoming larger and larger than the number of women.
Why is it so? What are the main reasons behind this status-quo? The Wetoo documentary asks female scientists at different career stages what they think about this and how they live the situation from the inside. But women are not the only ones excluded. What about all groups not belonging to heterosexual white men?
We will discuss all this with you and our speakers in our get together on the 05 May 2023, from 16:30 to 19:00 in Room S01, Seminargebaüde (106), Universitätsstraße 37, 50931 Köln
Programme:
16:30 – 16:35: Introduction (Dr. Claudia Acquistapace)
16:35 – 17:00: Projection of the video “Wetoo: what they don’t tell you” and brief collection of impressions. (moderating Dr. Anna Werma)
17:00 – 17:30: “It’s a long way to the top (if you wanna do Science). Gender and Career in STEMM fields” – Presentation from Dr. Francesca Crivellaro
17:30 – 17:45: Q/A (moderating Dr. Anna Werma)
17:45 – 18:00: Distant no more – Presentation from Dr. Dirk Schulz.
18:00 – 19:00: Open discussion, questions, opinions, round table (moderating Dr. Anna Werma).
Come and join our lively discussion to share your opinion and ideas! We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Event attendees:
Dr. Francesca Crivellaro, invited speaker, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Education Studies, Department of Education Studies “Giovanni Maria Bertin, University of Bologna.
Dr. Dirk Schulz, invited speaker, Managing Director of GeStiK – Gender Studies in Cologne, GeStiK – Gender Studies in Cologne, University of Cologne,
Dr. Anna Katrin-Schmidt Verma, moderator, Doctor in inorganic chemistry, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Cologne
Dr. Claudia Acquistapace, round panelist, Junior research group Leader, Institute for geophysics and meteorology, University of Cologne
Dr. Hajar Maleki, Group leader at Institute of inorganic chemistry and associated group leader at CMMC, DFG, University of Cologne.
When:
05/05/2023, from 16:30 to 19:00
Where:
Room S01, Seminargebaüde (106), Universitätsstraße 37, 50931 Köln
Organizing institutions:
University of Cologne (https://portal.uni-koeln.de/en/uoc-home)
Forum Accademico Italiano (https://fai.science/)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Transregional Collaborative Research Centre TR 172 (AC)³ and the University of Helsinki organized a joint winter school on Arctic amplification at the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station in Finland. The field station is located about 200 km north of Helsinki in a boreal forest. This remote place served as the perfect place to learn about state-of-the-art observations of the atmosphere and biosphere.
Our daily program consisted of lectures in the morning by scientists from Europe and the U.S. and a combination of group work and field excursions in the afternoon. The lectures covered all research topics of (AC)³: surface energy budget over sea ice and open ocean, cloud microphysics, aerosols, ocean and atmosphere remote sensing, climate feedback mechanisms, Arctic water cycle, atmospheric rivers, and polar-midlatitude linkages. A highlight was an excursion to the meteorological towers that observe for example the formation of new aerosol particles and the deposition of CO₂ by the forest (see photos below).
