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Status: Not confirmed |
Open to sharing: Yes |
Confidential: No |
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Transnational Access: No |
Open to training: Yes |
Grounded / Maintenance: No |
Aircraft name: M55 - Geophysica
Airport: India, Thailand, ... (t.b.d.)
Project theme: Climatic Relevance and Impact of the Asian Monsoon in Tropical UTS Processes
Project abstract: StratoClim (Stratospheric and upper tropospheric processes for better climate predictions) is a collaborative project funded within the FP7 Environment Program of the European Commission. The main goal is to produce more reliable projections of climate change and stratospheric ozone through a better understanding and improved representation of key processes in the Upper Troposphere and Stratosphere (UTS) emplyoing an integrated approach bridging observations from dedicated field activities, process modelling on all scales, and global modelling with a suite of CCMs and ESMs. With stratospheric sulfur and aerosol as one of its key objectives, StratoClim is expected to become a backbone of the recently established SPARC initiative SSiRC (Stratospheric Sulfur and its Role in Climate).
Science context: To properly model the injection of pollutants and natural compounds including H 2O and sulfur species into the UTS as well as the accompanying aerosol formation processes, the transport pathways of air masses from the free troposphere through the UTS into the stratosphere and their chemical and micro-physical transformations need to be known. However, only insufficient observations are available for the tropical regions of interest such as the Asian Monsoon (AM) region that is the dominant input region of air into the stratosphere in NH summer. The StratoClim aircraft field campaign now planned for the monsoon season 2015 will help to close this observational gap by providing spatially highly resolved measurements throughout the UTS in and around the AM region. We will focus on UTS processes governing the trace gas transport, chemical transformations as well as new aerosol formation processes. The campaign features the Russian high-altitude research aircraft M55 Geophysica with a ceiling altitude of up to 20.5 km equipped with an up-to-date suite of instruments supplying a quite complete set of chemical, physical, and micro-physical parameters.
Measurements to be made by aircraft: Almost complete suite of gas and particle phase parameters. Most welcomed payload additions: 1. Water vapour isotopologues 2. Detailed radiation measurements
Season: Asian Monsoon 2015
Flights (number and patterns): About 20 flights (ca. 4 hours/flight) to be distributed between instrumented transfer flights to/from the airbase (10-12) and dedicated local measureemnt flights. Patterns t.b.d. (in-situ as well as remote sensing flight strategies)
Name: Fred Stroh
PI email: F.Stroh@fz-juelich.de