SOLVE Journal

Dr. Paul A. Newman
Code 916
Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch
Laboratory for Atmospheres
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771

Building 33, Room E320
(301) 614-5985 fax: x-5903

My journal now closes as we close the third and final deployment of the SOLVE mission.. The DC-8 has left for home, the ER-2 has left for home, and the OMS payloads were both flown. All that's left is for Mike Craig and crew to ship hardware back to the States, and turn off the lights of the Arena. While our field phase is now complete, the sorting and analysis is only just beginning. From this analysis will flow the publications that are our final products.

I didn't get much of a chance to say farewell to my colleagues and comrades at the Arena before I left. For those that I missed, a fond farewell and good luck. The SOLVE and THESEO teams performed spectacularly well. We were given an opportunity to view an impressive display in the stratosphere, and our teams performed wonderfully. You always take a chance when making atmospheric observations. For every great campaign, you'll find a miserable failure. In our case, we not only had a great winter to make observations, but we had the platforms and instruments in place to make the observations.

Hardware only functions with work and dedication on the part of real people. This hard work extended from the instrument PIs to the aircraft crews. I watched ER-2 pilots Jan Nystrom, Dee Porter, and Jim Barrilleaux fly a single engine aircraft high out over the frozen Arctic Ocean. I watched crew chief Ron Lopez stay up most of the night to pull the ER-2 out of the hangar for the DC-8, and I know that most of the crew was just as eager to get the flights off. I saw Greg Forbes lose a lot of sleep over the details of his hour-to-hour forecasts. I saw exhausted crew and scientists crawl off the DC-8 after 10 hour flights. I saw Geoff Toon patiently waiting two months to launch his balloon payload. I saw Kathy Perkins and Eric Lanzendorf work through an entire night to get flight ready after an NO2 instrument failure. I saw Tommy Thompson and Joe Demusz working on nettlesome aircraft and instrument problems. I saw Leslie Lait skipping meals, staying late and arriving early to insure instant access to meteorological data and flight plans. I saw Kathy Wolfe patiently answering the same dumb questions on a minute-to-minute treadmill while negotiating with our hotels to have us breakfast at 3 AM. I watched Sue Tolley and Mike Craig trying to lasso wild project scientists. While I relate only a few episodes, such episodes were common daily occurrences on the part of all of the team members. I never saw a failure that was due to lack of effort by any team member. I have the deepest respect for this sort of conviction and hard work, and I cannot express enough thanks to all of those who worked so hard on SOLVE and THESEO.

Getting instruments ready for flight is immediately followed by data analysis work after landing. Project and crews usually dealt with similar time consuming issues. I didn't adequately portray this sort of daily work schedule in my journal. The common occupation of a team member is a daily 14-hour work schedule broken by lunch, dinner, and the odd foosball game. On my own part, I was usually in the hangar at a very early hour. I was either at an ER-2 upload on a flight date, or working to prepare a flight plan for the following day. I typically had to stay late to see the latest forecast cycle for the planning of a new flight. During the day, we had both our daily science team meeting and the forecast team meeting. A hundred other issues tended to cross our paths over the course of the day. There are a number of humorous and interesting episodes throughout this journal, but those are generally highlights rather than common. These episodes are peppered throughout the campaign on top of the overwhelming daily grind existence that wears you out.

Good luck to all, and once again, congratulations and my personal thanks to all of the members of the SOLVE/THESEO-2000 teams.

Friday 2000-03-17

As I mentioned yesterday, the ER-2 left Kiruna at 8:30 am yesterday and arrived at Westover at approximately 11:30am EST. A tough 9-hour transit for ER-2 pilot Jim Barrilleaux. Steve Hipskind reports:

The ER-2 left Kiruna at 8:30am local yesterday, Thursday, 16 March. It arrived safely at Westover almost nine hours later at approximately 11:30am local. All instruments appeared to function well except for a fail light on FCAS about halfway into the flight.
Things are proceeding toward closeout here in Kiruna. Much of the equipment is packed and pallets for the C-141 built. Quincy Allison is working out the plans for the various sea containers, surface shipments, and final destinations of the containers. We will send out an update once the final shipping plans are in place. We will give you destinations and estimated arrival dates for each container.
It is snowing in Westover (Friday morning). The ER-2 flight to Dryden has been delayed. They will make a call at noon (est) on whether they can go at 2 PM est. Forecast is for high winds behind the passing front. If the flight today is scrubbed, they will try again tomorrow (Saturday, 18 Mar). (Jim Podolske is the point-of-contact for project/science - we will expect a full report of his adventures in Westover ala Wendy's memoir).

Thursday 2000-03-16

I left Kiruna yesterday morning at 6:05 AM on the SAS flight down to Stockholm, and reached home early yesterday evening. My bag of dirty clothes didn't make it here, but I don't mind. As I went outside to get my newspaper this morning, the temperature was in the 50's, the robins were singing their songs, two Canada gooses flew overhead noisily honking along, and you can smell spring in the air. Great to be home!

The ER-2 left Kiruna at 8:30 AM (Kiruna time) this morning in transit to Westover, Mass.. I'll guess that the ER-2 will arrive in Westover at about 11:30 AM EST.

One piece of very good news comes from Geoff Toon and his OMS remote sensor payload. Geoff finally launched his payload yesterday at 2:05 AM after being in Kiruna trying to launch since mid January. Geoff reports on the flight:

The OMS remote gondola (MkIV & SLS) has just been terminated after a very successful flight with more than two hours at float. The gondola is believed to have landed in the far NE of Finland, close to the Russian border. Both instruments worked extremely well, obtaining data throughout sunrise as the solar zenith angle increased from 94 to 83 deg. We anticipate profiles over the 11 km (cloud top) to 28 km (balloon) altitude range.
Many thanks to all the people who encouraged us to stay the course and persevere with the flight attempt. The OMS remote gondola (MkIV & SLS) has been found upright and in excellent condition, and should be back in Esrange tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.
This was the 13'th balloon flight of the MkIV instrument, and was performed on the Ides of March, so we are sure glad to get it behind us. It appears from the latest PV maps that the observations were made inside the vortex edge.

The DC-8 also departed Kiruna yesterday. Eric Jensen's flight report:

Took off at 05:55 UT. There were clear skies and a beautiful views on climbout. By the time we reached our initial cruising altitude of 33 kft, we were well within the stratosphere.
On the northbound leg, DIAL indicated that ozone mixing ratios between 15 and 18 km were in the 1.2 to 1.5 ppmv range. Between the north coast of Sweden and Spitzbergen, we passed through another remnant of the Hekla plume, with large variations in CN number density and SO2 enhancements of up to 600 pptv. The plume was over 10-minutes wide, but we were flying approximately along the wind. Just after we exited the plume at flight level, DIAL showed a narrow, non-depolarizing layer slowly sloping upward as we headed north. The layer was only about 500-m thick. LASE appeared to show the same layer sloping upward toward the aircraft in the nadir south of where it appeared in situ.
At about 11:47 UT [need to verify/correct time], very high values of NOy and HNO3 (over 4 ppbv) were observed (even though we were at relatively low altitudes of 33 to 35 kft).
When we ascended to 35 kft, we again entered the volcanic aerosol layer. It was visible to the south as a distinct white layer above the clouds. SO2 showed peaks as high as 1000 pptv. There was very little enhancement in PCASP, and NMASS showed that the vast majority of the particles were smaller than 55 nm. We were in the layer from 07:25 until at least 07:55 UT. In spite of the large horizontal scale of the plume, there was consistently a great deal of fine-scale structure, with intermittent CN and SO2 dropouts to near-ambient levels.
Gravity waves were apparent in the DACOM and MTP measurements near the north end of Spitzbergen.
Between 08:00 and 09:30 UT, AROTEL and DIAL showed various weak scattering layers between 12 and 15 km, with IR scattering ratios up to about 2.5, and no depolarization. There appeared to be a 1- to 2-km thick, weakly scattering aerosol layer above this thin layer.
As we passed north of Greenland, ozone dropped toward 1 ppmv between 15 and 20 km, eventually dropping below 1 ppmv at 18 km in small patches. By about 09:35 UT, the ozone was below 1.2 ppmv everywhere below 19 km (possibly the lowest ozone column observed on the mission). DIAL observed a minimum value of about 850 ppbv at 18 km.
At about 10:00 UT, we reached the vortex edge and ozone concentrations generally increased smoothly. A filament of low-ozone air (correlated with a pocket of low temperatures) was apparent at about 10:50 UT.
We landed at McCord AFB at about 14:30 UT. After a brief refueling, we took off again at 15:45 UT. We flew into persistent contrails at about 33 kft.

Mike Craig and Jeff Greenblat managed to capture the SOLVE foosball tournament on Tuesday. Mike bought the foosball table some time ago, and it's been a regular fixture in the hangar. The table provided a very nice break to the daily grind in the hangar. Mike was the odds-on-favorite to win the tournament, but his partners kept departing before the tournament was over. Finally, Mike managed to acquire Jeff as his permanent partner. As most of us know, Mike is a very good foosball player. He and Jeff lost 1 game to Megan (the hammer) Northway and Paul (whatever) Wennberg and got bumped into the losers bracket. However, he and Jeff fought their way back from the losers bracket to take the SOLVE foosball cup by defeating Megan and Paul in two consecutive games.

Tuesday 2000-03-14

The ER-2 instrument loading began at 7 AM this morning. A very reasonable hour compared to the last few weeks. The load up is going very smoothly and while the wind is blowing a bit strong, it's right down the runway. The flight today is what we call a "stacked flight", since the track resembles a stack of cards. After takeoff, the ER-2 will fly out just past the Norwegian coastline to an altitude of 41,000 feet near 69^oN and 14^oE. He'll then fly northeastward at 41,000 feet for about 330 nautical miles to about 74^oN and 20^oE. After reaching this northern point, he'll turn around and head back toward the 69^oN and 14^oE point but go up to 47,000 feet. After reaching the southern point, he'll turn north again and ascend to 53,000 feet. Again after reaching the northern point, he'll turn back towards the southern point and ascend to 60,000 feet. He'll hold this 60,000 foot level for 1/2 hour and then go up to about 65,000 feet before coming back into Kiruna. The ground track of the ER-2 is shaped like an L, with the northern and southern points forming the vertical part of the L, and Kiruna at the end of the L. Since all of the flight legs are "stacked" atop one another at the 4 altitudes (41, 47, 53, and 60 kft), we call this a stacked flight.

This would have been a great ER-2 flight, unfortunately, the cross winds began to pick up, and we were forced to scrub the flight at 11 AM. The weather gods decided to lash out at us one last time. Fortunately, we've accumulated a huge body of data over the last few months, so this scrub doesn't sting too badly. We also managed to get a group picture of the entire SOLVE team out on the ramp just after they finished fueling both the DC-8 and the ER-2. More of those shots later.

Monday 2000-03-13

Yesterday was another great set of measurements inside the polar vortex. There's still plenty of reactive Cl for ozone loss, and ozone continues to decrease. The ER-2 measured temperatures were pretty warm. As I mentioned yesterday, all of the instruments worked well.

Today was a down day for the ER-2, while the DC-8 was flying up to Spitsbergen and then over to Novaya Zemlya again. The lidars should show us if there are any PSCs still around. Doubtful, but possible.

We'll be doing a "stacked flight" of the ER-2 tomorrow. We'll begin the loadup of the ER-2 at 7 AM and launch the aircraft at 11:30 AM. Recovery is scheduled for 4:45 PM. We'll sample 4 altitudes tomorrow just off of the Norwegian coastline: 37 kft, 41 kft, 53 kft, and 66 kft.

I had a great day of skiing with the CIMS group and Tom Hanisco (son-in-law of Sue Johnson) of the Harvard HOx group yesterday. We drove out into country near the Kebnekaise area. They've got some nice rolling hills and frozen lakes and rivers for interesting cross country skiing. The trails were chewed up by snowmobiles, but the terrain was nice and scenic with some lovely frozen waterfalls. On the trail I was wearing my POLARIS hooded sweat shirt, my sweat pants, my oddball E-10 stocking cap, and my running shorts over the outside of my sweats. In short, I looked like a geek. I met Uwe Raffalski of the IRF on the trail and he asked me what I was doing. I replied that I was doing my best to demonstrate what a skiing idiot I was. Uwe pointed that wearing my underwear (i.e., running shorts) on the outside of my sweats was a good start. The folks who were behind me could contrast my skiing style with a drunk driver: sooner or later there's gonna be a wreck, you just don't know when or how severe it will be. In any case, I had a good time.

The drive back was an adventure. There were six of us skiing, so we took two cars: mine and Paul Wennberg's. Dave Tanner of the CIMS group was driving Paul's car with Karena McKinney and Suresh Dhaniyala. I was a couple of hundred yards behind Dave with Paul Wennberg and Tom Hanisco (son-in-law of Sue Johnson). The ski lodge is about 70 km from Kiruna. As I drove along on the snow and ice covered road at about 70 km/hr while following Dave, I noticed a quick spray of snow from the right tires of Dave's car. An instant later, Dave's car nosed over off of the road into the snow and a huge cloud of snow burst upward from where his car had nosed in. I quickly braked and we pulled alongside their Volvo wagon that was partially buried in the snow. Everyone was fine, but the car was completely buried. Dave suggested we try and push it out, but the five of us just laughed. The right side of the car was completely under the snow in the ditch and the front of the car was totally buried. The car was resting on a couple of feet of snow and about 2 feet below the road level in the ditch. We pulled skis & poles and bags of stuff out of my car and piled them into the buried car to make room for all six of us. We drove 60 km back to Kiruna where I discovered that someone had inadvertently put my clothes into the buried car. Since I hadn't changed back at the ski lodge, I was left wearing my underwear (i.e., running shorts) on the outside of my sweats. This provided a lot of entertainment for folks at the Arena when the ER-2 landed at 6 PM. Fortunately, I made it back to my hotel and changed out of my "underwear" for the end-of-mission party at Mommas.

We had a nice and lively end-of-mission party at Mommas last night. Mommas is the bar located in the Scandic Ferrum hotel in town. Usually, Mommas is closed on Sunday night, but they opened up for our special occasion. Lots of good camaraderie and a small bit of beer drinking for a group that's helped put together a fantastic mission.

The foosball tourney is drawing to a close. An image of pilot J. V. Nystrom explaining foosball to conehead Mike Craig, while Jim Sokolik asks, "Now where did I mislay that pilot?"

Sunday 2000-03-12

The ER-2 load up went extremely well this morning. Wind conditions were light and skies were clear all day. Takeoff was at 10:30 AM, and the plane landed at 6:05 PM. All of the instruments worked: 3rd time in a row!

I spent a good fraction of the day skiing. I'll report on that tomorrow, along with a report on tonight's end-of-mission party at Mommas.

Saturday 2000-03-11

6:40 AM - Deja Vu, a sense that you're experiencing something that has happened at a previous time. We've loaded the ER-2 for three straight morning starting at 4 AM and scrubbed on Thursday and Friday. Three's a charm.

8:00 AM - Everything looks good for a 9 AM ER-2 takeoff. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, avoiding black cats and ladders, and clutching my rabbits foot.

9:30 AM - The ER-2 took off at 9 AM exactly. At this time, everything on the aircraft is working properly. Landing time is set for 5 PM. Hurrah!!

5:12 PM - The ER-2 landed at 4:58 PM. Immediately after the ER-2 landed, a bunch of parachuters jumped out of a plane over the airport and gently glided down onto the airport. One parachutist did an amusing header into a snowbank just off the runway as the ER-2 was powering down in front of the hangar.

The ER-2 flight was very successful today. All of the instruments worked, and we managed to achieve all of our objectives. First, we did cross the vortex edge. Pilot Jim Barrilleaux reported a maximum wind speed of 111 kts at the vortex edge (the jet core). We saw some nice filamentary structure material coming off of the vortex into mid-latitudes in all of the trace gas species. Again, the Harvard ClONO2 instrument measured significant reactive chlorine inside the vortex, and ozone continues to decrease. All round, an excellent flight.

The DC-8 will takeoff at 1 PM for an 8.5 hour flight that will land at 9:30 PM.

With today's successful flight of the ER-2, we are planning another flight for tomorrow going eastward into Russian airspace and then up to Franz Josef land.

After the last couple of scrubs, I began to feel the wrath of the troops here. Here's a joke:

What do you know when you find an ER-2 project scientist buried up to his head in snow? They ran out of snow.

The Swiss Learjet will do a pilot proficiency flight today that will take them up over Andoya.

Here's Mark Schoeberl's flight report for the DC-8 flight of March 9.

Took off from Kiruna at 15:00 UT. We were in the tropopause heading north. DIAL saw a PSC layer between 13 and 14 km, with a separate cirrus layer just above the aircraft. This layer was distinct and probably formed from uplift over the high tropopause. The layer disappeared at 73 N. It was Type 1b. Ozone was 1.1 to 1.3 ppm up to 20 km, above which ozone increased dramatically with altitude.
At 16:45 UT we encountered a "Hekla-type" aerosol anomaly with high SO2, suppressed ozone, and elevated NOy. At 17:20 UT, as we approached Iceland, a very thin ice cloud was detected by DIAL at 12 km (probably tropospheric high-humidity air injected into the middle world). As we approached Iceland we began to exit the vortex. Ozone began to increase at in the 18- to 20-km region and decrease below 10 km. LASE showed clouds below the aircraft moving upward and thickening.
Over Iceland we descended into the high cirrus decks that were below us for 10 minutes. As we descended to the cirrus decks at 35 kft, HO2 went up by a factor of 2.5 while OH stayed constant. Enhanced aerosol layers were seen at 15 km. Edge structure in ozone was observed by both AROTEL and DIAL. The interesting thing about the edge structure is that high ozone (characteristic of, perhaps, a chemically unperturbed vortex) is observed near the Iceland edge, but then rapidly decreases toward the vortex interior where ozone loss has occurred. This effect is enhanced by downward motion that will increase ozone near the edge.
Another 12-km PSC was observed on the transition to Iceland. Small patches of edge ozone (assuming isentropic transport) were seen in the interior of the vortex at 18 km. As we emerged from the vortex, low-ozone anomalies (filaments) were observed at 20:14 UT. This appears consistent with the high-resolution trajectory maps of potential vorticity.
The DC-8 crossed into the troposphere at about 20:33 UT, approaching Scotland at 37 kft. We then ascended to 39 kft. Many small-scale features in ozone were observed by AROTEL outside the vortex; features that were only 1- to 2-minutes wide, but that had horizontal coherence. Re-entering the vortex off the coast of Norway toward Kiruna, ozone began to decrease rapidly at 20 km; NOy rose to almost 3 ppb, with ozone at 0.6 ppm at 22:15 UT. This was clearly an NOy "puddle" at the DC-8 flight level. A second NOy "puddle" of 4 ppb was seen at 22:30 UT (178 mbar). A second Hekla-type plume was seen at 22:40 UT. SO2 hit 1000 ppt. HO2 also rose 30 to 50%. The plume was about 10-minutes wide and highly structured. A second plume was seen about three minutes after the first. It was cleanly separated, but the second plume was only about two-minutes wide. As we approached Kiruna, ozone above the aircraft continued to drop at 20 km from 4 ppm at the vortex edge to less than 2 ppm.

Friday 2000-03-10

"Gads, what's that annoying buzz?" I open my eyes, glance at the clock, it's 4 AM and that ^%$* alarm clock is ringing. OK, OK. I'm up, out of bed, into the shower, dressed, and out of the E-10 hotel in 15 minutes. As I go out the door I glance at the flags near the OK gas station. Flapping way to much in the wind. Not good. Into the Volvo wagon, skid my way out of the parking lot, through the automatic traffic lights and off down the highway to the Arena Arctica. Plug in the car's electrical cord for its heaters, through the gate, slip down the path, and into the Arena hangar. Things are already bustling at 4:25 AM. I hang my coat and then hustle to the break room. The break room is very important at 4:30 AM. First, I can grab a cup of Bobby Porter's coffee (a real lifesaver), and second, look at the TV screen which displays the meteorological conditions here at the Kiruna airport. At 4:30 AM the winds are at 14 kts almost straight across the runway. Not good. I get over to the met room and run through the flight plan with Leslie Lait. At least the flight plan looks great. He uploads some new plots and we work through the forecast winds and temperatures for today's projected flight. About 5 AM Greg Forbes (our meteorologist) comes in, and he doesn't look too happy. Not good. I give him a good morning, make a wisecrack about the blueberry soup he's carrying, and skip back out the door to the plane to see how the load-up is going. The load up is going great and everybody seems to be in a positive mood. Tommy Thompson has set up his web-cam so that folks back in the states can follow our load-up in real time. The web-cam causes folks to horse around and ham it up a bit. I continue across the hangar to the break room, grab another cup of coffee and glance at the TV again for the winds. Not good. I hustle back to the met room and Leslie's got all of the finishing touches done on this Scotland flight plan. "Good job Les. Now let's put together a 6-hour plan in case we've got a weather window." Now we start scrambling. Jim Anderson (my co-project scientist) and I sit in front of the computer monitor and work up a 6-hour plan. By 5:30 AM we've worked out the plan and printed it out for the pilots. We now have our primary 8-hour plan, and a back-up 6-hour plan in case we get a weather window. Greg starts a running commentary on today's weather as he surfs through his weather information. Not good. Jim and I wander out to the hangar floor and we see the pilots coming up to the plane. The crew starts throwing comments at the pilots, and J.V. Nystrom asks me, "What've you been doin with my crew." I crack back, "Nothin JV, just a little Prozac in the coffee this morning." The pilots wander up to their room, and Greg Forbes follows to give them a weather briefing. It's almost 6 AM, and time to brief the pilots on today's flight plan. Jim and I start walking up to the pilot's room and meet Greg coming back, and he's not smiling. Not good. He quickly feeds us the problem: landing time winds are out of limits. We now go through the motions of wandering up to the pilot's room, where JV gives us the official call. Scrub.

So the weather gods struck again today. We're currently planning the same type of flight for tomorrow. DC-8 is down today, and the Swiss Learjet will takeoff for Spitsbergen at 9:30 AM, land for fuel, and then onto the pole. The Learjet should be back at about 8PM tonight.

There's a nice web page on the Swiss Learjet that Dietrich Feist wrote.

Thursday 2000-03-09

Up at 4:00 AM for the ER-2 load, scrubbed the flight at 6:00 AM because cross winds were out of limits for flying. Time to go to breakfast, than some skiing. DC-8 and the Swiss Lear jet are still on schedule for flying today. The DC-8 is scheduled for a 3 PM takeoff with a landing at 12:30 AM. We'll try a similar ER-2 flight plan going down towards Scotland for tomorrow.

I got a nice 40 minute cross country ski in this morning. As you walk around the hangar, you can find dozens of people who've rented or purchased cross country skis. There's a cross country skiing course near here on the road to Kurravarra. The course has a lighted 3 km track, and other tracks of 5, 11, and 15 km lengths. The trails are well groomed and very easy to ski on and follow. It takes less than 10 minutes to drive there from the hangar, and you can ski the 5 km run in about 1/2 hour. Many of our team members regularly use the trails. Renting skis is cheap and the trails are free. This gives me the opportunity to take a break each day and get some exercise away from the hustle and bustle of the Arena Arctica. There's one depressing aspect. All of the native Swedes are at least 2 to 10 times faster than me. I mean ALL of the Swedes, fit young 20 year old males, 80 year old women, 5 year old kids, they all easily outpace me on the trails. I'll be peacefully plowing along when some older gentleman will pass me at 30 km/hr. In any case, it's a great workout and it allows you to burn away some of the pressures of the campaign.

An interesting aspect of these long deployments is how you can lose all perspective on time. I was talking to Mark Schoeberl yesterday, and I mentioned, "Gee Mark, you might be interested in an interesting feature I saw on one of the met charts a few days ago." Mark replied, "That was yesterday Paul." In my own mind it did seem like many days ago. Time has a funny way of distorting and you begin to forget the day of the week, and only remember the date. For example, I know that today is March 9, but I have to think to remember that today is Thursday. If it wasn't for the calendar pinned to the wall I'd be completed lost. Thank goodness my return airline ticket has March 15 printed on it.

Here's Eric Jensen's flight report from yesterday's March 8 DC-8 flight:

Takeoff at 08:30 LT (09:30 UT). Passed through thin cirrus during climb-out. We cleared the cirrus about 29 Kft. Beginning at around 0900 UT, DIAL showed a thin, non-depolarizing layer at about 12 km. A thin cloud layer was visible above the aircraft to the south. The layer persisted for at least 30 minutes, ascending slightly as we headed east. The layer was probably ternary aerosols. It was also very distinct in the LASE zenith backscatter display.
As we headed east along the northern coast of Russia, the flight-level temperature dropped steadily and LASE showed the cirrus tops moving upward toward the DC-8 altitude. At about 1030, we entered the cirrus tops at 35 Kft. TOTCAP water was about 25 ppmv before we entered the cirrus, and jumped to 80 ppmv when we entered the clouds. Particulate NOy was also detected. At 35 Kft, the clouds extended as much as 1.5 km above us. When we ascended to 36400 feet, the flight level temperature dropped below 200 K.
A faint, non-depolarizing PSC was apparent at about 15 km at 1045. We were near the upwind edge of the cold pool at this point. According to MTP, the temperature was below the NAT frostpoint between about 14 and 20 km. This layer thickened (to 14-17 km, consistent with the MTP profile) and strengthened with time, but remained non-depolarizing. AEROTEL indicated a strong scattering layer at about 12.5 km, with strong depolarization. It appeared to be above the cirrus deck and above the MTP tropopause. The scattering ratios were as high as 20, so the layer was probably an ice cloud. Eventually, the layer at 15 started to show weak depolarization. The PSCs were visually apparent to the north of our flight track. Very distinct wave structures were apparent in the PSCs and ozone near the easternmost part of the flight. The tropopause temperature dropped to as low as 192 K. MTP showed minimum temperatures near 18 km less than 190 K.
AEROTEL showed patches of ozone less than 1 ppmv from the tropopause up to 18 km between 1100 and 1230, possibly due to an intrusion of midlatitude air.
We began the dip to 31.5 Kft at our easternmost waypoint. We did not quite reach the cloud base. At the beginning of the sun-run, the cirrus were too thick for the FTIR instrument to track, but as forecast, the cloud-top dropped as we headed north, so Mankin was eventually able to get spectra. Both the ternary aerosol layer at 15 km and the ice layer at 12 km petered out as we went north.
MTP showed a beautiful wave-train downwind (north) of Novaya Zemlya. The waves were also apparent in the cryogenic frostpoint time series. At about 1252 and 1318 UT, we passed through a regions about 3 minutes wide with enhanced CN and SO2.
As we headed south back down into the cold pool, weakly depolarizing PSC layers appeared at 13 and 15 km. Further south, stronger PSCs filled in between 13 and 17 km (the layer between 15 and 17 km had higher scattering and depolarization). Near the south end of the leg, the ice cloud at 12 km was again apparent in LASE zenith and DIAL. There appeared to be a continuous layer of weakly depolarizing aerosols between 12 and 18 km, with an embedded strongly depolarizing layer at 15-16 km and ice crystals at 12 km. When we ascended to 39.7 Kft, the flight-level temperature dropped to nearly 195 K, and we apparently skimmed the tropopause. Particulate NOy was detected in the lowermost stratosphere (ozone levels above 300 ppbv), along with sporadic FSSP signals.
As we headed north out of the cold pool again, the 12 km ice layer disappeared first, then the NAT layer at 15 km, then the ternary layer narrowed and eventually disappeared. At about 1540, a narrow, depolarizing layer was briefly present at 15.5 km, where the temperatures were barely below the NAT frostpoint. This layer eventually became more distinct (after 1600). It disappeared at about the time MTP showed the temperature rise above the NAT line. We overflew Ny Alesund and landed at about 1845.

Wednesday 2000-03-08

The DC-8 flew over into Russia today across our favorite island: Novaya Zemlya. The DC-8 continued on a "round-the-vortex" tour to look at the temperatures, ozone, and PSCs streaming out from this cold pool. Takeoff time was at 9:30 AM, and it returned shortly after 7:45 PM. The DC-8 observed all 3 types of PSCs (Ia, Ib, and II) over the course of the flight. Temperatures were extremely cold in the lowestmost stratosphere with tropopause temperatures at about 195 K. Great flight with Eric Jensen as the on-board project scientist while Mark Schoeberl sat back here at the Arena. Mark spent his day planning for Thursday's flight.

We're getting ready for both ER-2 and DC-8 flights for tomorrow. The ER-2 flight will go out of the polar vortex down over Scotland, while the DC-8 will go towards Greenland and zig-zag across the polar vortex edge down towards southern Norway. ER-2 takeoff time is set for 9 AM, with the instrument loading beginning at 4:30 AM.

The Swiss Air Force Lear jet arrived this afternoon. The Lear jet has a microwave water and ozone instrument. They're planning to fly with the DC-8 down towards Iceland tomorrow while the ER-2 does its Scotland flight. All 3 flights will be sampling the polar vortex edge region.

Tuesday 2000-03-07

The loading of the ER-2 instruments began at 2:30 AM this morning for our vortex survey flight. Jim Barrilleaux will be the pilot today. The load-up has been very shaky this morning. Power fluctuations clobbered the JPL water measurement, which led to a 45 minute delay. The current takeoff time was shifted from 7:00 AM to 7:45 AM. Jim's flight plan took him over part of the Kola Peninsula, eastward across Novaya Zemlya, and eastward across the Kara Sea. Jim turned the ER-2 northwestward up to 84N and 30 E. After reaching that point, he turned south and passed over Spitsbergen on his way back into Kiruna. Jim landed the ER-2 in Kiruna at exactly 3:45 PM. In the debriefing he reported that the temperatures were about as predicted, near -80 C (-112 F). The flight was very successful with absolutely no instrument failures. Ozone is still quite low and it appears that we may have sampled a mid-latitude filament of air inside the polar vortex. There were just some minor PSC hits during the flight.

The ER-2 immediately prior to today's takeoff with Jim Barrilleaux in the cockpit.

We tried to launch the OMS remote balloon payload today, but had to scrub at 1:45 PM because of high winds.

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was walking over to the Takeoff Cafe for lunch with 2 of the instrument investigators. The wind was really howling, the blowing snowfall was stinging our faces, and wind chill temperatures were down at about -20 F. Next to the road, partially buried in the snow was an interesting bottle. I picked it up, rubbed off the snow and POOF, out popped a genie! The genie eyeballed us, told us that he conventionally gave out 3 wishes to whoever freed him from the bottle, but that since there were three of us, he'd give each of us a single wish. The first investigator immediately started whining about hating the cold weather and wished he could be back home in sunny Southern California. POOF, he was gone. The second investigator said, "I'm absolutely fed up these &%$#%^& pre dawn load ups. All I want is to be in sunny Hawaii with my girl friend." POOF, he was gone. The genie turned to me, "Well, what's you wish?" I thought about it for a moment, turned to the genie and said, "I want those two guys back here at 2:30 AM for the ER-2 instrument load."

Monday 2000-03-06

Yesterday was just spectacular. Two aircraft and a balloon payload in the air at the same time. All 3 flights made some great measurements. We've seen ozone losses and chlorine activation all over the vortex.

Another day, a new flight plan. We're planning yet another flight across northern Russia and our favorite island: Novya Zemlya. This time we'll aim for a 7:00 AM takeoff which means we'll start loading the ER-2 at 2:30 AM with hands off at 4:30 AM. The DC-8 has a down day today and has scheduled a flight for Wednesday.

Yesterday's picture of the airport looking north from the Arena towards the main terminal. At the time the temperature was about -4 F, but the winds were at a dead calm. ER-2 mechanic Bobby Porter was having a great time during yesterday's load-up. Today's weather is snowy, windy, and cold. Walking back from the Takeoff Cafe was miserable.

Mark Schoeberl's summary of yesterday's DC-8 flight:

Took off from Kiruna at 12:00 UT. There was clear weather until the coast of Norway, and we saw some spectacular views. Ozone from DIAL appears lower than on the last flight; we saw ozone values below 1 ppm at about 22 km. ASUR detected ClO above the aircraft. As the flight progressed, ozone touched 1 ppm in the ~16-km region. At 13:07 UT over Spitsbergen, the aircraft passed through a Hekla-type "aerosol anomaly" with high SO2, particle count, and lower ozone. LASE also detected the anomaly. The anomaly was 20 to 30 km thick. More anomalies were detected from 14:27 to 14:50 UT in the aerosol data as we were transiting to Novaya Zemlya from Spitsbergen. These anomalies were much weaker and SO2 was only slightly elevated.
Low-ozone anomalies (1 ppm) were less evident on the track between Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. Ozone hovered at about 1.2 ppm at 16 km. A PSC was observed after 14:50 UT as we crossed over Novaya Zemlya. The PSC was depolarizing; AROTEL temperatures were 188 K. The PSC had a lot of horizontal structure and continued to be observed past Novaya Zemlya. A second PSC was observed at 18 km (altitudes are geometric) where the AROTEL temperatures showed a second minimum in temperature below 185 K. These two layers merged as we approached the turn point. The lidar showed that these PSCs consisted of fairly large solid particles.
Progressing along the Lagrangian flight track westward, the PSC layer started out a few km thick, thinned while slowly ascending to about 19 km, and then disappeared. As we approached the forecast position of the cold pool, the PSC layer reformed briefly at 16 km then thinned and disappeared at the center of the cold pool. LASE showed no cirrus below the aircraft so the dive was skipped. Headwinds were more intense than forecast so skipping the dive put us back on schedule. Intermittent thin-layer PSCs were seen as we moved out of the cold pool. The in situ data indicated other CN anomalies about 20-km wide that did not show any SO2 signatures. These were probably intrusions of tropospheric air that are spun out into ever thinner filaments.

Sunday 2000-03-05

8:00 AM - It's a really great feeling to wake up at 5:00 AM, pull the shades, and look out at the flags barely flapping in the breeze. We piled into the car, got here at about 5:30, and the wind gages (anemometers) showed speeds of less than 3 kts. The sky is clear, the winds are light, and the temperature is cold (-20 C or -4 F). Perfect flying day. The ER-2 load went very smoothly this morning. The ER-2 pilot for this Russian flight is Jan Nystrom. We may actually get 4 NASA payloads into air today. The ER-2 will be launched at 10 AM, the OMS in-situ payload will be launched at about 10 AM, the DC-8 will takeoff at 12 PM, and the OMS remote payload should be launched at about 1:00 PM. FANTASTIC, a banner day for SOLVE!

10:00 AM - The ER-2 launched at 10:00 AM exactly with pilot Jan Nystrom at the controls. Hurrah!

12:00 PM - The DC-8 took off exactly on schedule for a flight up to Spitsbergen, over towards Novya Zemlya, and then back to Kiruna.

5:00 PM - The OMS in-situ balloon payload was launched at about 4:14 PM. At this moment, it's about 50 miles away from the Arena Arctica (after being launched at Esrange), and it's ascending past an altitude of about 50,000 feet. It can easily be seen from the Arena as a bright star to our southeast in spite of its great distance from here. Big things can be seen from a long ways away with a little bit of reflection from the sun.

5:40 PM - The OMS in-situ balloon could be seen till about 5:30 PM. The balloon was about 60 miles away at about 65,000 feet when it disappeared from view. It could have been seen for an even longer period, but a low level of haze came in from the southeast to obscure our view. Bill Brune reports that there were a number of instrument and electonic problems, but that they had a beautiful launch. ALIAS-II failed on the launch pad. The ER-2 has a scheduled landing of 5:55 PM.

JV pulled the ER-2 into the chocks at exactly 6 PM after touching down at about 5:50 PM. The instruments appear to have worked flawlessly and the aircraft is in fine shape. This was JV's first flight over Russia, and he did a fanatastic job. Russian General Zahkarin presented him with a patch and pin after JV stepped from the cockpit. The temperatures observed by the ER-2 were extremely low (-84 C or -119 F), with the pilot reporting PSCs all about him near the cold pool. All of the instruments worked today with some minor glitches.

The DC-8 landed at about 9:15 PM. They observed an extensive deck of PSCs near Novya Zemlya. Great sights of Spitsbergen in the daylight. Pilots Rogers Smith and Dick Ewers did a great job!

The OMS payload was terminated and had a last position just near the Sweden-Finland border near the Gulf of Bothnia.

Saturday 2000-03-04

Another day, the same drill. We all came in to the Arena to start loading the plane at 5:00 AM. Unfortunately, the winds were really howling as we came in. The hangar was very cold, since the DC-8 got pulled into the hangar at about 3 AM, and it hadn't heated up at 5 AM. We were constantly checking the winds, but it was clear that we were right at the wind limit for takeoff. By 8 AM, we'd decided that winds were just too strong for flying. In any case, by 9 AM and then again at 10 AM (takeoff times) the winds were out of limits, so we made the right decision to scrub. Time to go skiing, but the wind chill drops the 10 F temperature down to about -30 F during gusts, so it's too damn cold.

The DC-8 had an excellent flight yesterday. Mark Schoeberl's report:

Took off from Kiruna at 14:30 UT. No PSCs were observed heading south. Both DIAL and AROTEL took ozone data during daylight. MTP temperatures were near 195 K at 22 km with a very weak tropopause in evidence at 10 km. Stratospheric temperatures warmed as we flew west after our turn over Scandinavia. Ozone levels within the vortex were about 2 ppm at 18 km. This value fluctuated very little over the whole flight. As we approached the edge of the vortex over northern Greenland, the stratospheric temperatures warmed considerably as predicted by the models. In situ instruments recorded occasional intrusions of midlatitude air at flight level. This could be seen as sudden decreases in ozone and NOy correlated with increases in CO.
As predicted, we left the vortex on the far western edge of our flight track; ozone and temperature at 20 km increased dramatically. The DC-8 ascended to 39 kft shortly near the turnaround at northern Greenland, then to 41 kft when we turned east over Spitsbergen. In situ ozone rose to above 500 ppb, with NOy reaching 2 ppb. Both AROTEL and MTP temperatures were 190 K near 22 km as we entered the cold pool, but no PSCs were seen until we moved east of 25 E. A PSC layer appeared at 15 km; the layer was depolarizing. AROTEL temperatures in the PSC layer were below 190K. Above the PSC layer there was a few-degree increase in temperature and slightly enhanced ozone. The PSC presence was intermittent as we went south toward Kiruna, and a few PSCs were seen at 16 km just before landing.

We're yet again planning another ER-2 flight into Russia for tomorrow. Takeoff at 10 AM takeoff. As we planned for Thursday, the ER-2 flight will pass mainly over the northern portion of Russia, just to the south of Murmansk, over the Kola peninsula, and then directly eastward to a point that is just north of the Ural Mountains. After this eastward track, the plane will turn westward after reaching about 65^oE, pass over the Novya Zemlya island and reaching about 74^oN and 30^oE. The plane will then turn northward, pass over Spitsbergen Island to 81^oN, turn back southward and land at Kiruna at about 5 PM. As was true for all of these flight plans over Russia during the last few days, the ER-2 will be in the polar vortex over the entire course of the flight, and will fly through some very cold temperatures at the southern tip of Novya Zemlya island.

Temperatures in the vortex will rise over the next few days above temperatures necessary to form PSCs. This warm up will probably cause tomorrow's flight be our last chance to sample PSCs for the winter. Greg Forbes tells us that a BIG storm will pile onto us on Monday.

Friday 2000-03-03

Leslie Lait (NASA/GSFC Code 916) has set up a web page describing the Hekla volcanic plume that the DC-8 intercepted on Monday.

6:30 AM We started the ER-2 instrument loading at 4:30 AM and were done by 6:30 AM. The load went off without even a minor hitch. The weather is also cooperating at last, winds are light (less than 10 kts), and the visibility is relatively good. However, the weather gods always toy with us. As soon as the instrument load was completed, winds began to pick up and a light snow began to fall. Hopefully we won't have any aircraft problems on top of weather worries. The ER-2 flight will be in some very cold temperatures (-80 C or -112 F), so we expect to see some polar stratospheric clouds. The ER-2 will also be inside the polar vortex over the entire course of the flight.

10:15 AM - Oh boy, another roller coaster ride. At about 6:30 AM, the winds picked up, the snow started, ceilings descended and we couldn't launch the ER-2. We rolled the plane back into the hangar, and had a quick conference on flight possibilities for the next 72 hours. On the off chance that the weather gods would cooperate, we canceled our Russian flight plan, and came up with a back-up 4 hour flight plan for a launch this afternoon at 1:30 PM. Soooo, we're now planning a 1:30 PM takeoff, fly northeastward to about 71^oN and 29^oE, then fly straight north to about 78^oN, followed by a return along the same track with a slow descent into Kiruna. While we don't nearly sample as much of the polar vortex as we'd like, we still get into cold temperatures, and we reach the center of the vortex. The fascinating aspect of this whole coaster ride is that the weather suddenly has cleared off (nice blue skies), and the winds have fallen off a bit. Greg Forbes (our weather forecaster) is starting to going a bit crazy. He's been predicting good weather today, but he was really taken aback by these stronger winds and the snow this morning. As the winds were picking up and the snow was starting to come down rapidly, Greg looked out my office window, sighed, and exclaimed, "God I hate this place."

11:00 AM - ER-2 takeoff time has been moved up to 1:00 PM. DC-8 flight is still scheduled for 3:35 PM.

1:00 PM - So they were opening the hangar doors to pull the ER-2 out at 11:30 AM. Mark Schoeberl and I took the opportunity to walk over to the Takeoff Cafe for lunch. As we were walking over, some gentle snowflakes were falling while directly above us the sky was blue. Mark remarked, "Where the hell is this stuff coming from?" Apparently the stuff was being blown in from some high clouds to our north. Not good, I need a couple of valiums. I get over to the Takeoff, grab my tray, fill it up, get to the cash register, and ... a cell phone rings. Half a dozen people pull out their cell phones, but unfortunately, it's mine that's ringing. "Hello?" "Hi Paul, it's Kathy Wolfe, they just scrubbed the ER-2 flight because of a hydraulic leak." My response... sigh. So ends today's flight attempt. We'll try again tomorrow. After the DC-8 launch, time to go skiing.

The real entertainment here in the Arena Arctica hangar revolves around a foosball table. Mike Craig, who happens to be the best player in the hangar, has set up a double elimination tournament. We've now passed through the first round of the tournament. While Mark Schoeberl refused to play, Jim Anderson with Ross Salawitch were knocked into the losers bracket on the first round. Steve Eckerman and I managed to win in the first round, but we were trounced 10-2 in the second round by David Tanner (CIMS) and Jim Sokolik (ER-2 life support).

We had a large batch of student from the Swedish IRF visit us yesterday.

Thursday 2000-03-02

The snow seems to have ended, but winds picked up this morning. The temperature is about -12 C (10 F) but the wind chill makes it vvvvery, vvvverrry ccc-ccc--cccold.

We're planing an ER-2 flight into Russia tomorrow with a 9 AM takeoff, and a DC-8 flight up towards the northeastern ear of Greenland. The ER-2 flight will pass mainly over the northern portion of Russia, just to the south of Murmansk, over the Kola peninsula, and then directly eastward to a point that is just north of the Ural Mountains. After this eastward track, the plane will turn northward after reaching about 65^oE, pass over the Novya Zemlya island and Franz Josef Land until reaching about 85^oN. The plane will then turn southward, pass over Spitsbergen Island and land at Kiruna at about 5 PM. The ER-2 will be in the polar vortex over the entire course of the flight, and will fly through some very cold temperatures just to the south of Novya Zemlya island.

On December 27, I went skiing with my brother-in-law up in the North Cascades of Washington State. Unfortunately, I fell awkwardly on an icy slope and broke my upper arm bone. It's almost completely healed, so I went cross country skiing yesterday near the airport. It was quite cold, but the snow was powdery, the trail ran through clean forest, I had a couple of very nice skiing partners (Greg Forbes and Jessica Neu), we had nice solitude, and we got a very nice workout.

Wednesday 2000-03-01

The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on the Earth Probe satellite saw the Mount Hekla erruption plume on Sunday. The TOMS web site shows a nice image of the plume as I described it in yesterday's entry.

As Dr. Forbes forecast yesterday, "Light snow of somewhat varying intensity, with temperatures -16 to -13C. Snow accumulating about 4 inches between Tuesday midnight and Wednesday midnight." No chance for flying the ER-2, and they're still changing the oil & filters on the DC-8 engines. Time to go skiing.

The current ER-2 schedule is to fly on Friday when the weather has improved. Hopefully the DC-8 filters will have arrived, and we'll be able to fly a coordinated flight on Friday. The objective of the Friday flights of the ER-2 and the DC-8 is to survey the core of the polar vortex.

Tuesday 2000-02-29

We went 0 for 4 today on launches. Two scrubs on the OMS remote, 1 scrub of the OMS in-situ, and 1 scrub of the ER-2.

The OMS remote payload balloon launches were both scrubbed today. The first scrub was early this morning, and the second at 1 PM. Both were scrubbed because of snow and winds. The OMS in-situ payload was scheduled for a launch this evening at 8 PM, but they scrubbed at 6 PM because of clouds, winds, and snow. Geoff Toon reports on the early OMS remote scrub:

The attempt to launch the OMS remote payload (MkIV and SLS) tonight was scrubbed. This was due to the likelihood that the balloon would ice-up, substantially slowing its ascent. Additionally, the low level winds (currently 13 kts) exceed speeds permitted for a nighttime launch. Another launch attempt will be made tomorrow afternoon at 13:20 LT for a sunset flight.

We scrubbed the ER-2 flight this morning shortly before 5 AM. When I got up this morning at 3 AM, the snow was still coming down. As it turns out, this snow band that came over us last night stalled on top of us, and the forecast suppression of these systems only materialized to the south of us. Because we don't have any useful tools for nowcasting the movement of these bands (either away from us or back on top of us) we were forced into the scrub. We'll continue to revisit the weather situation, but the prognosis is not good for the next couple of days.

The stratosphere continues to remain cold into early next week. These temperatures will remain cold enough to form PSCs until about next Monday. As I've pointed out earlier, the PSCs convert chlorine compounds into forms that can catalytically destroy ozone (aatalytic losses occur when the chlorine molecule destroys an ozone molecule, but regenerates itself in the process, see the intro web site). When the PSCs disappear at the end of winter, the ozone loss process continues until the chlorine compounds are converted back into non-reactive forms after a week or so. We're swiftly moving into the stratospheric spring period, so the disappearance of cold temperatures on Monday is probably the last time we'll be able to see any PSCs for the rest of the winter.

Mark Schoeberl (DC-8 co-project scientist), Jim Anderson (my ER-2 co-project scientist), and Chip Trepte (SAGE III project scientist) arrived in Kiruna today on a delayed SAS flight.

Eric Jensen reports on the DC-8 transit flight from Dryden:

Took off at 13:08 LT (21:08 UT).
We briefly lost 60 Hz power about 5 minutes after takeoff. Left side 400 Hz stayed down (DIAL, AROTEL, and in situ ozone). At 15 Kft, we were already above the clouds; we crossed the tropopause at about 31 Kft. Then after a few minutes, the tropopause appeared to be above us, but the ozone was bouncing around near 300 ppbv (intrusion?). For some time, we appeared to be flying right along the tropopause at 31 Kft.
We attempted to power up 400 Hz again about 40 minutes into the flight, but it went down again when DIAL tried to power up. This caused many of the instruments to reset. Further investigation revealed the problem to be a broken switch at one of the power stations used by DIAL. After the switch was replaced with an unused switch from the CCD camera, 400 Hz power was restored at about 23:11 UT and all was well. Several of the instruments lost data during all or part of the first two flight hours due to the power problems.
At 23:12 UT, we were forced to descend to 33 Kft by air traffic control, and we dipped into the tops of cirrus (possibly mixed with contrails) at about -59 C. Kondo reported particulate NOy. LASE showed that the cirrus below were several km thick.
As we crossed the west coast of Greenland at about 03:10 UT, we crossed the edge of the vortex, and the stratospheric temperatures began dropping. At about 03:50, both DIAL and AROTEL detected a thin cloud layer at 16 km with IR polarization, then another thin layer at 15 km. The layers were no more than a few hundred meters thick. MTP showed NAT supersaturation from about 15 to 21 km. We stayed at 37 Kft so the lidars could sample the low PSC layers.
As forecast, the in situ temperature dropped steadily as we crossed Greenland, reaching values as low as -72. C. There was a small anticorrelation between particulate and gas-phase NOy in this cold air, possibly due to HNO3 uptake by sulfate aerosols. After we crossed the east coast of Greenland, the in situ temperature increased about 1 K. From Greenland on, we were generating a thick contrail, which formed within 1 to 2 m behind the engines.
The PSCs were patchy, but remained below 16 km over Greenland, even though the temperature above continued to drop. At 04:31 UT, a layer appeared at 14 km. By 04:40, we had multiple cloud layers from about 13.8 to 17 km geometric altitude. The lowest layer was depolarizing in both IR and visible.
At about 05:08 UT, we entered the volcanic cloud, and it showed up in most instruments: DIAL was wiped out by it. Large enhancements in CN, NOy, HNO3, CO, and NMASS particle counts. Ozone went to nearly zero, HO2 jumped up, AROTEL saw strong scattering layers up to 13 km. ASUR saw HNO3 enhancements in the lower stratosphere. The plume was a very impressive, orange, airfoil-shaped feature in the pre-dawn sky.
At about 05:18 UT, we exited the volcanic cloud. The PSC from 15 to 17 km got stronger, with scattering ratios as high as 2.5 to 4. The PSC persisted as we crossed the north Atlantic. Eventually, a thin layer at 18 km was apparent intermittently. The PSCs broke up when we approached the coast of Norway.
On decent into Kiruna, we dipped into optically thick cirrus at about 32 Kft.

The DC-8 engines will need an oil change and new filters after our pass throught the Hekla volcanic plume on Monday morning. First science flight will be on Thursday. The Hekla plume was observed by the TOMS Earth Probe satellite in the SO2 observation on February 27 as a very narrow filament that curved around from the souteast of Iceland around the bottom of Iceland and up towards the eastern side of Greenland.

Monday 2000-02-28

Another picture taken by the ER-2 pilot J. V. Nystrom on the February 26 flight. Rennie Selkirk calls the right super-pod the flying narwhal.

The NASA DC-8 safely landed in Kiruna at 8:15 AM after a long-long transit flight from NASA Dryden in California. The DC-8 reports that it encountered the plume from the volcanic eruption of Mount Hekla in Iceland on today's flight at about 37,000 feet north northeast of Iceland at 76^oN and 5^oW just off the Greenland coastline. Chris Hostetler showed me that the plume extended up to about 43,000 feet. This plume is well into the lower stratosphere. See the advisories on the ash cloud. The lidar guys also reported that there were extensive PSCs from about mid-Greenland all of the way across the North Atlantic. Most of them are dog tired right now.

We're planning an ER-2 flight for tomorrow that will go down into Russia. The flight will go from Kiruna to about 55^o N and 50^o E. This is near the city of Kazan about 400-500 miles east of Moscow. The objective of the flight is to make measurements from inside the polar vortex (the stratospheric polar vortex is overhead right now) to well outside the vortex (down near 55^o N and 50^o E). The takeoff time will be 8 AM, with a 2 PM land time (flight duration of 6 hours). The instrument upload will begin at 3:30 AM.

There's going to be a lot of activity out at Esrange tomorrow for balloon launches. Both the OMS remote balloon and possibly the in-situ balloon will launch. Geoff Toon reports:

There might be an attempt to launch the OMS remote payload (MkIV and SLS) from Esrange early tomorrow morning (Tuesday, 29 February) at around 03:30 LT for a sunrise flight. If this launch attempt is scrubbed there will be another attempt tomorrow afternoon at 13:20 LT for a sunset flight.

We really got a snow dump today. I'd estimate about 5 inches with the stuff still falling. Since temperatures aren't too bad, and since I don't have the maddening Washington D. C. drivers to contend with, I'm actually enjoying the snow driving in my rental Volvo station wagon. Great fun skidding along empty snow covered roads. My passengers don't nearly enjoy this sort of fun as much as I do. In fact, I don't seem to have many persons asking me for rides. However, when I do have passengers, it's very interesting to see how their knuckles turn white while they grip the dashboard.

Sunday 2000-02-27

Have you ever seen the ground from 65,000 feet? On yesterday's flight, ER-2 pilot Jan Nystrom used a digital camera to take a picture of the pack ice near Spitsbergen Island. You can see the front of the superpod on the left wing. The hole in the front of the superpod is the inlet for the Harvard ClONO2 instrument. This instrument measures ClO, the gas that is primarily responsible for ozone loss in the Arctic stratosphere.

Photo taken at 65,000 feet by ER-2 pilot J. V. Nystrom using Tommy Thompson's digital camera. See Tommy's web page for some great images and descriptions of life in Kiruna.

Our compartriots aboard the DC-8 leave Dryden tonight and will arrive in Kiruna tomorrow morning at 8 AM. Mark Schoeberl will also be arriving on the 11:50 AM SAS commercial flight.

Tomorrow is not a particularly good flying day with snow, strong runway cross winds, and low visibility.

We're currently planning another flight into Russia for Tuesday. Again, we'd like to make our measurements from deep inside the vortex to well outside.

People here are also getting excited about the eruption of Mount Hekla in Iceland on Sunday. Reuter's reported that columns of ash went up to six km (four miles). Some folks were hoping that Hekla would belch a bit of material into the stratosphere. One of our scientists suggested at our 1:30 PM science team meeting that we go and sample the volcano. Our pilot laughed and pointed out that the airplane would only do that once! There is some worry that the ash cloud might come our way and interfere with our operations, but this seems unlikely. See the advisories on the ash cloud.

Saturday 2000-02-26

It's 6 AM right now in Kiruna, and we have a really fine morning for flying. The skies are clear and the winds are nearly completely calm (only 1-2 mph of winds). Our flight plan remains basically the same as outlined yesterday. We had some very fine snowfall last night. It always gives me a scare, because I figure it will foul our chances of flying. However, the snow was very fine and sparkled beautifully under the lights. We're still set for an 8:30 AM takeoff (7:30 GMT for Sue Tolley's benefit).

Pilot J. V. Nystrom took off at 8:30 AM on the nose for his 8 hour sortie. Beautiful sun dog almost directly south as he took off. The skies are clear, the sun is bright, the air is cold, and we're all feeling pretty good. When you're having a tough time getting the plane off of the ground because of weather, aircraft or instrument issues, the morale of the science team perceptibly droops. People are tired with no data to show for their efforts. As soon as the plane takes off, the pilot is up in the air drawing a pint of our life blood: stratospheric data. With no instruments to care and feed, the team disperses for rest and recreation. As the landing time draws near the team begins to reassemble. The hours after landing can be spectacular as people download and begin to analyze their data. Nothing better than seeing some new amazing feature in your data.

The ER-2 landed at almost exactly 4 PM. At the 4:30 PM debrief, the pilot reported that the winds and temperatures were about as predicted. Coldest temperature observed by the pilot was about -81 C, as we predicted yesterday. He encountered no turbulence, again as predicted, and he did observe PSCs on the horizon. The entire payload worked today, but a few of the instruments need some tweaking. Rick Stimpfle of the Harvard ClONO₂ group reports that there's a lot of ClO inside the vortex today, which means that we should be seeing some ozone loss. A quick eyeball look at Erik Richard's ozone data shows some evidence for this catlytic ozone loss. The NOAA AL NO/NOy group again measured some PSCs and are able to show considerable denitrification of the vortex.

As usual, a bunch of us walked over to the Takeoff Cafe here at the Kiruna airport for lunch, as is our usual daily lunchtime ritual. Today was the meat loaf, potatoes, and corn special, served by a real Swedish chef.

Svensson, the real Swedish chef at the Takeoff Cafe. He wanted to wax his mustache, but I told him that it looked just fine. I didn't ask whether he'd heard of the muppet Swedish Chef.

Friday 2000-02-25

We're preparing to fly tomorrow. The goal of this ER-2 flight is to re-survey the polar vortex since our last flight from Kiruna on February 3. The weather looks good for tomorrow, so we'll takeoff at 8:30 AM, head south to about 62 N, and then fly straight north over Spitsbergen to about 85 N. This flight will scan the polar vortex from its edge all of the way through its core and see how ozone has changed and whether there is still lots of reactive chlorine that can cause ozone destruction. In addition, we'll be able to look for polar stratospheric clouds, since we'll sample very cold air that's below about 192 K (-81 C or -114 F, brrrrr). A piece of air broke off of the vortex broke off on about February 18 and has been pulled into a long streamer of air along the edge of the vortex. Unfortunately, we'll be just a bit too far north of this streamer on our projected flight path. However, we should be able to get some good vortex measurements and polar stratospheric clouds on this flight. In contrast to our last deployment when the ER-2 was mostly flying in the dark, this flight will be flown mainly in the light. The sun will just dip below the horizon on the most northern end, but the pilot will always be able to see the horizon and will be in twilight conditions. The 8:30 AM takeoff means that we'll start loading the ER-2 with instruments at 4 AM, and complete the load at about 6 AM. This means I'll have to get up at 3:30 AM, sigh.

We had a long discussion at dinner last night about Kiruna restaurant ratings. Of course, all agreed that the Jukkasjarvi Wardhus was the best restaurant in the area for dinner (breakfast and lunch are different choices). The second best restaurant caused quite a bit of debate. Grapes Bar and Diner at the Scandic Ferrum hotel gathered some votes, but Mat & Mums (the M & M) seems to collect more votes. A number of folks had particular dishes that they favored, the chili pasta at Henry's Kitchen and Bar collected quite a few votes (particularly since we were eating at Henry's, and 5 of the 6 of us were eating the chili pasta). The Hotel Kebne restaurant was rated highly, but they typically only have the single chef's special choice each night. The only Chinese restaurant in town (the Nan King) was also rated highly, but one of our chinese science team members (hint: he's very interested in the measurement of stratospheric rocks) told me that he ordered pizza when he ate at the Nan King. More on this later as our debate evolves.

Thursday 2000-02-24

The Harvard HOx and water instrument is located in the nose of the ER-2, and is handled by Jessica Smith, Ryan Spackman, and Tom Hanisco. The HOx group has two little "tiki gods" mounted on a laptop they use during the instrument upload. Unfortunately, these tikis are totally incapable of handling polar weather. Winds were up this morning, ceilings were low, and light snow was falling. Hence, we scrubbed the flight at 5:30 AM. Weather doesn't look real good for tomorrow, so we'll aim to attempt a flight on Saturday.

Wednesday 2000-02-23

We're still planning a flight for tomorrow with a takeoff time of around 8:30 AM (0730 GMT). The planned track is to fly northward past the Norwegian coastline, turn towards the northwest and overfly Spitsbergen at about 9:30 GMT, and continue directly northward towards the pole. The airplane will turn around up near the pole and do a descent down to about 52,000 feet, followed by a return to maximum altitude near 68,000 feet, followed by a return back to Kiruna. The vortex edge is just slightly northwest of Kiruna, and the coldest temperatures are located in the region bounded by the pole, Spitsbergen, and Northern Greenland. Hopefully we'll be able to see polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) in this region and lots of reactive chlorine. Landing time will be at about 4 PM.

The OMS remote balloon payload is still waiting for good launch conditions out at Esrange, while the OMS in-situ payload is being prepared for launch. The French CNES MIR balloon payload was launched on February 18, and is still floating around inside the polar vortex. To track the payload, see the CNES web site.

Jim Ross of NASA Dryden took some very nice photos of the ER-2 and DC-8 on our last deployment.

The GSFC folks. Bottom left: Austin Conaty (code 910.3), right: Steve Eckerman (Naval Research Lab). Top left: Leslie Lait (code 916), middle: Jim Pierson (code 916), and right: Paul Newman (code 916). The proximity to the plane of theory and data people is dangerous, but the crew was out to lunch at this time.

Tuesday 2000-02-22

I left Washington, DC on Sunday afternoon and arrived back in Kiruna at noon on Monday. When I arrived, the temperatures were only moderately below freezing, the sun was out and the winds were calm. The sunshine off of the snow was absolutely dazzling. Went to the hotel & pulled out my sunglasses after checking in. The winter can actually be quite beautiful when it's a bit brighter and the temperatures are warmer (above 0 F). Yesterday's sunlight is in terrific contrast to early January when the sun barely peaked it's rim over the horizon for a couple of hours. Now, the sun gets about 12 degrees above the horizon and is up for about 9 hours. Since everything is covered in snow (even clinging to trees), the sun and its reflection off of the snow makes everything very very bright. Of course, today it was overcast and foggy in the morning, and snowing in the evening.

Svensson (the cook at the airport's Takeoff Cafe) gave us a warm greeting today, and prepared us moose burgers for lunch. Yum. In one of my January entries, I remarked that one of the Takeoff Cafe lunch specials included "mashed swedes." No, this had nothing to do with Swedish football or Swedish rock N' roll mosh pits. "Mashed swedes" are mashed turnips, just like mashed potatoes. Again, surprisingly good.

Temperatures continue to remain cold in the polar stratosphere. Forecasts show these cold temperatures holding together into the weekend. Total ozone values are low inside of the polar vortex, but not anomalously low for this time of the year. We're now planning a long ER-2 survey flight into the vortex core and cold temperature region for Thursday.

Friday 2000-02-18

We're all starting to prepare for our departure back to Kiruna for the third and final phase of SOLVE. As I mentioned on Wednesday, the vortex continues to remain cold. The forecasts show these cold temperatures extending till the middle of next week. The ECMWF forecast at 20 km shows the temperature increasing above the Type I PSC temperature on about the 23-24th of February.

Here's a picture of (l-r) Phil Decola, General Valery Zakharin, Pilot Jan Nystrom, Pilot Dee Porter, and myself in front of the ER-2 on January 31 (photo by Ross Salawitch of JPL). Holy mackerel, but I do love that Arctic parka.

Greg Forbes of the Weather Channel says that a report on SOLVE will be broadcast on Monday (Feb. 21) between the hours of 8:30 and 10 PM. Unfortunately, I'll miss my 15 minutes of fame, since I'll be back in Kiruna.

The GSFC SOLVE group is helping me celebrate my Sunday departure this evening by drinking up a case of my home brewed beer.

Wednesday 2000-02-16

The third and final phase of SOLVE is about to begin. I'm leaving for Kiruna on Sunday (Jan. 20) and will arrive in Kiruna on the Monday noontime SAS flight. The trouble with this 2 week break from phase 2 is that it doesn't seem like I've actually been back home. The break is just too short to readjust to home life after nearly a 4 week stay in Kiruna. At least I balanced my checkbook, paid most of my creditors, and completed my tax returns. This next phase will at least keep them off my trail for the next 4 weeks, assuming they're not reading this journal.

The temperatures in the polar vortex near 20 km continue to remain cold enough (less than 195 K or -109 F) for PSCs to form. A minor stratospheric warming peaked on February 9, considerably warming the upper and middle stratosphere. The lower stratospheric temperatures continue to be cold, and the Data Assimilation Office forecasts show them remaining cold through to February 20th. This cold pool is about at an altitude of 20 km, and is located from central Greenland up to the pole. The first possible ER-2 flight is scheduled for February 24th, so we'll probably be able to see PSCs on our first flight from Kiruna.

SOLVE Links

General

Forecasting

Stratospheric meteorology

Last Updated: 2000-03-07

Author: Dr. Paul A. Newman (NASA/GSFC, Code 916) (newman@notus.gsfc.nasa.gov)

Web Curator: Dr. Leslie R. Lait (Raytheon ITSS) (lrlait@ertel.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Responsible NASA organization/official: Dr. Paul A. Newman, Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch