AC20 was the last flight of ACRIDICON-CHUVA campaign in Brazil. Altogether we had 14 scientific flights based here in Manaus, we spent almost hundred flight hours in the air. This is quite impressive, in particular taking into account the harsh environmental and technical conditions here in the Amazon. The instruments worked surprisingly well, we had no major failures. Also, HALO itself was not grounded for technical reasons throughout the entire campaign.
We took off for AC20 with three mission objectives: (a) to have another coordinated flight with the American G1, to sample outflow (because we had the feeling that the data collected so far for the outflow mission type were not yet complete), and (c) finally to collect more cloud profile data. Because of missing clouds we failed with the attempt to collect more measurements for the coordinated flight with the G1 (mission objective a). However, in particular the outflow sampling was very successful.
We picked a textbook outflow on our way and crossed it in numerous altitudes perpendicular and parallel. We were flying above and below this poor outflow cloud. This made sense because amazingly the cloud seemed quite stable during the 2.5 hours it took us to sample it. Near the end of the sampling the outflow descended, and lost momentum.
We took off for AC20 with three mission objectives: (a) to have another coordinated flight with the American G1, to sample outflow (because we had the feeling that the data collected so far for the outflow mission type were not yet complete), and (c) finally to collect more cloud profile data. Because of missing clouds we failed with the attempt to collect more measurements for the coordinated flight with the G1 (mission objective a). However, in particular the outflow sampling was very successful.
We picked a textbook outflow on our way and crossed it in numerous altitudes perpendicular and parallel. We were flying above and below this poor outflow cloud. This made sense because amazingly the cloud seemed quite stable during the 2.5 hours it took us to sample it. Near the end of the sampling the outflow descended, and lost momentum.
On our way back we managed to collect another of the "ever popular" cloud profiles, see photo.
Guest blogger and photos: Manfred Wendisch