Discovery Earth Live: Arctas 2

Mike Obland: Homecoming

July 13, 2008 – Day 20 – Today was the HSRL team’s last day on the road for a while. Dale and I had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel before packing our bags and heading back to the airport to prep for our last ARCTAS transit flight. While Dale did the preflight on the B-200, I readied the HSRL for flight and filled the RSP instrument dewar with liquid nitrogen. Les and Mike showed up shortly thereafter, and I helped Mike give an impromptu tour of the airplane and instruments to his relatives. Who knows, maybe they’ll be flying with NASA instruments when they get out of college in about 15 years!

After Les and Mike said goodbye to their relatives, we had to wait at the airport to take off because the Langley air field had a short field closure scheduled, so we did not want to arrive right in the middle of that and have to circle the airport. Soon enough, we were on our way from Pontiac, Mich., to Hampton, Va. A major weather front was moving through the Midwest, so we typically had too many clouds above us to take useful RSP data. We even had to decrease to a new altitude about midway through the flight due to weather. The clouds cleared out around the time we passed the Virginia state border, and we were on the ground shortly after 2 p.m. to a nice homecoming of loved ones and co-workers, who showed up even on a Sunday! The aircraft was pulled back into its home hangar, where we unloaded it while catching up with our friends. We then went our separate ways to enjoy the remainder of the weekend in the very un-Yellowknife-like weather: hot and humid, but without mosquitoes.

It feels good to be home, and most of us will be back at work tomorrow to start analyzing the data and trying to understand the science behind it, taking off our "instrument operator" caps to put on our "scientists" caps. This job keeps us pretty busy, but I think most of us would not have it any other way. We should be at home for a while now, but it is only a matter of time before we are off to some new location to take data. Until then, thanks for reading along and joining me on this adventure!

Picture: Mike Wusk

Mike Obland: Heading Home

July 12, 2008 – Day 19 – Everyone met for the usual continental breakfast in the lobby of our hotel just before 6 a.m. It felt like any other science flight day, except that we were starting much earlier than normal. We drove out to the airport to begin our preflight tasks and were surprised that most of the population of Yellowknife seemed to come out to see us off. By most of the population, I mean the mosquitoes, of course. The wind is very calm early in the morning so we were swarmed both inside and out of the airplane. I think that was one of the quicker preflights that we have ever done. We quickly packed up our gear, and checked the instruments while Ed and Mark unhooked the nitrogen tank from the RSP before running inside to avoid being eaten alive.

Les, Mike, Dale and I got on board and closed up the airplane, along with the swarm of mosquitoes that were inside. I believe we killed off the last pair of stowaways about 2.5 hours later, shortly before landing in Thompson, Manitoba. That was the worst I had seen the mosquitoes during my entire stay in Yellowknife. It was as if they were trying to leave us with an impression of the place!

The weather was decent in Canada, although very cloudy, and we were able to measure more of what looked to be smoke from a smoldering fire around Lake Athabasca before landing in Thompson. We quickly refueled there and ate breakfast at the tiny snack bar inside the Thompson airport, since we knew we would not be stopping for lunch in Duluth. The weather quickly degraded as we went further south and by the time we got to Duluth the winds at the airport were reported to be gusting to 25 knots, which makes for a very bumpy ride (definitely one of the bumpier descents I have experienced in the King Air) and a difficult landing. You really feel all the bumps and abrupt altitude changes in an airplane as small as the B-200. Les made the landing look easy, which is why he is our pilot.

The customs procedures went smoothly, even though the official was nearly blown off the tarmac by the strong winds. After refueling, we were on our way to Pontiac, Mich. The winds at cruising altitude were with us and we arrived in Pontiac earlier than we had expected. Les and Mike have family in the area, and Les’ relatives were waiting at the airport. He was able to spend time with them, and Dale, Mike and I went out to dinner at a steakhouse with Mike’s relatives. After dinner, Dale and I returned to our hotel and I worked on analyzing, disseminating and archiving the day’s three flights before heading to bed. After starting the day at 5 a.m., I was exhausted. We have one more day to go before being home!

Mike Obland: Packing Up

July 11, 2008 – Day 18 – Today was our last full day in Yellowknife. Because of our work schedule, today wound up being a hard day down, which gave those of us leaving tomorrow on the B-200 (Les, Mike, Dale and me) a chance to pack and get ready for the upcoming transit flights back to Virginia. The plan is to take off early tomorrow morning and head south to our usual refueling stop, Thompson, Manitoba, before heading to possibly Duluth to go through U.S. Customs, and then on to Michigan for the night. I spent the morning relaxing, packing all of my gear into several suitcases, and working out before meeting with Dale, Mike and Ray to head to the Yellowknife "beach", a man-made sandy area on the coast of one of the lakes near the airport. It was a little windy, cloudy, and chilly for my tastes, but I could imagine it would be a nice place to relax after having to endure a long, dark, cold Yellowknife winter.

Mike and I waded out into the cold lake just up to our knees, but were not brave enough to actually swim as Ray did. I will wait to swim until I am back in the warmer waters of Virginia Beach!

Ed had secured reservations for our entire group at one of the most-recommended restaurants in town, Bullock’s Bistro, which is too small to accommodate groups larger than a few people without a reservation, so when we all arrived back at the hotel we ventured out to the restaurant. The place does not offer much for service, you actually have to go get your own drink from their coolers, and they do not have a menu. The waitress/owner just comes over to your table and informs you of the fresh catch of the day. I had a sampling of several different types of fish and thought the food was all excellent. The evening was spent exchanging photos and equipment to be shipped back to Virginia in our packing crates, and getting some sleep in anticipation of an early 7 a.m. take-off tomorrow for the first leg of our trip home.

Mike Obland: Last Flight

July 10, 2008 – Day 17 – We had another morning flight today. We left the hotel around 8 a.m. and picked up a box of donuts that I had ordered for the crew. You have to take care of the people that take care of you, and everyone loves donuts!

This flight did turn out to be the last science flight for ARCTAS, as the NASA airplanes are all packing up and heading for their home bases on Saturday. We finished with a banner day of coordination: we rendezvoused with both the P-3 and DC-8 at the same time and we each took data along the same track, even though we were behind the other two planes since they can fly much faster than we can. It was neat to see the two planes lining up several thousand feet beneath us and then taking off into the distance as we talked to their pilots over the radio. We followed their tracks for as long as we could with our fuel load and then turned on to a CALIPSO run for the flight back to Yellowknife; it was another very successful flight. Having so many instruments taking measurements of forest fire smoke from different altitudes, both in situ and remotely, will go a long ways towards helping our scientific understanding of the interaction between smoke and our atmosphere.

While I was flying, Ray was on the ground packing our crates for the trip back home. The maintenance guys were packing their crates, too, and preparing the documents for passing through U.S. Customs. We are definitely trying to leave Yellowknife on Saturday, and we have a hard down day tomorrow. Ray finished most of our packing today and will finish the rest this weekend. He will fly out on Monday afternoon and I will be flying back on the B-200, since he took the transit flights up here to Yellowknife. Depending on the weather, we should be able to at least make it back to the States on Saturday, and could be home on Sunday. Ed and Mark will be returning commercially on Tuesday. I think everyone is anxious to see their families, especially after we finished the last official science flight today and are now switching into packing mode.

Les, Mike, Ray and I had dinner at the Wildcat Café again tonight. I had a musk ox steak and thought it tasted very good, not very different from beef. I wanted to try something new while I was up here. Who knows when I will try musk ox again; it is not something you can routinely find at a Virginia grocery store! I spent the evening doing laundry and packing for the trip home. I am definitely looking forward to being at home for a change!

Mike Obland: Forest Fire Hunting

July 9, 2008 – Day 16 – Today’s initial plan was to meet at 7:20 a.m. for a takeoff scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Because of last minute changes to the P-3 schedule, we wound up leaving Yellowknife at about 10:15 a.m. instead. I took the flight today and will probably take tomorrow’s flight so that Ray and I come out even on the number of flights we have flown during this campaign.

We flew southeast through thick cirrus clouds with the intention of meeting up with the P-3 for a CALIPSO run heading back to the northwest. The P-3 was a bit early in getting to the CALIPSO track and they radioed to us that the cloud situation was much better to the east where they were. We decided to leave our southeast route early so that we could rendezvous with them; we were not getting great data in the thick clouds anyway.

Sure enough, we broke out of the thick clouds and met up with the P-3 in a narrow region of clear air in between strips of cirrus clouds overhead. We coordinated with the P-3 and took great data with RSP. Coordination with the P-3 was difficult at times due to the communications lag between the scientists on the ground planning the flight and the pilots and scientists on the airplanes who are actually seeing and responding to the atmospheric conditions in real time. I think forest fires are a more difficult research target than the atmospheric pollution or haze that we usually measure because they are so dynamic. Fires that were burning a few days ago may have been put out in the meantime, or may have been eclipsed by much larger fires burning close by. Whereas most information for the flight plans usually comes from satellite measurements and weather forecasts, I think we are seeing that forest fire hunting requires more real-time observations from the scientists and pilots in the air. We worked through the communications difficulties and had a successful flight with the P-3 crew.

The question now is centered on when we will be leaving Yellowknife to go home. The original plan was to leave on Monday, July 14, but the P-3 and DC-8 may be leaving as early as Saturday, so there would be no real reason for us to stay, especially with forest fires still burning back in our home state. If we left Saturday, that means we will need at least one day to pack all our equipment into our shipping crates and plan the flights. We also are supposed to take a hard down day on Friday, so we may have to fit our packing and planning all in tomorrow. We’ll see how it works out.

Kirk, Barbara, Ray and I finished our evening with dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. Tomorrow should be another early flight with the DC-8 and P-3, and it may be our last ARCTAS science flight.

Picture: Ray Rogers

Mike Obland: Catching Up

July 8th, 2008 – Day 15 – Les, Mike, Dale and Ray had two successful flights yesterday to get themselves down to Edmonton to study forest fires burning in southern Canada. This morning was quiet and slow in Yellowknife with half of the crew now out of town. I think everyone took the morning pretty easy and relaxed a bit. I found time to get a workout in and went out to the airport in the afternoon to work on some of our data and prepare for the arrival of the King Air.

They returned at about 4:30 p.m. after two CALIPSO runs looking at forest fire smoke. After catching up with Ray about the instrument performance and trip down south, we returned to the hotel for the evening. Most everyone ate dinner in their rooms to try and finish up some of their groceries before leaving town. I spent most of the evening analyzing data and getting our reports, uploads and backups caught up from the last four out-of-town flights. It felt good to be caught up again. Tomorrow has us starting a little earlier than usual, so we will meet at 7:30 a.m. to find out the latest plans.

Andreas Beyersdorf: So Long, But Not Goodbye

Palmdale, California, July 14, 2008 -- Well, it’s time for one of the most anticipated parts of these missions – deintegration. Even though this has been a great project, everyone here is excited to get home. But before they can do this they must unload the plane of their instrumentation. While integration onto the plane usually takes 3 weeks, deintegration takes only a few days. By the end of today, the plane will be virtually empty. Tomorrow some of the groups must continue to work on their instruments and pack and by Tuesday everyone will be home. But even though they are home, this doesn’t mean ARCTAS is completely over. Data analysis will continue over the next year and the researchers will look to present the results of this campaign in both publications and presentations.

Unlike everyone else, Terry Lathem and I are not removing our rack (the housing for our instruments). Rather we are doing a few minor changes in order to prepare it for the next science project. This one is entitled Arctic Mechanisms of Interaction Between the Surface and Atmosphere (AMISA) and will take the DC-8 and us to Kiruna, Sweden during August. I look forward to another mission in the Arctic but I am also looking forward to some time home in Virginia between the two missions. I hope you have enjoyed reading about ARCTAS and thanks.

Andreas Beyersdorf: The Joys of Snow Photochemistry

Thule, Greenland, July 8, 2008 -- Greetings from Thule. We arrived this afternoon at 5. The fog was thick when we landed and the pilots almost had to divert to Iqaluit, Canada. Thankfully, we didn’t. After clearing customs and checking into the hotel, everyone has dispersed. A few of the researchers went out exploring the base and the nearby coast, some went to the base exchange, and others (including myself) went to check their email.

This is actually my third trip to Greenland, but my first to Thule. During 2003 and 2004, I was part of a snow photochemistry experiment at Summit, Greenland. Snow photochemistry is the study of sunlight-initiated chemical reactions that occur in and above snow. One example of these photochemical reactions is the formation of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) during the spring and summer. This is surprising because these compounds are most commonly produced from combustion reactions and nitrogen oxides in car exhaust are a major component of urban smog. By studying this chemistry we can assess how these in-snow reactions affect air quality in snow-covered regions. These regions can be clean sites like Summit or more polluted regions like the northern U.S. during the winter.

During tomorrow’s flight, the DC-8 will fly over Summit in order to compare our DC-8 based measurements to the ground-based measurements. Summit is located at the top of the Greenland ice sheet and is vastly different than Thule (as can be seen in the photos). Typically the Summit base houses 4-6 researchers during the winter and 20-30 during the summer months. There are very few buildings at the site and most of the researchers sleep in unheated tents during the summer. Transport to the base is by Air National Guard C-130s that fly to the base approximately once a month during the summer.

While it is an enjoyable place (with great food!) and a great place to do research, being in such an isolated location can be tiring. Because of the small size of the base we may not be able to see it from the plane, but I will definitely be looking out the window for it.

Terry Lathem: A Moment to Remember

Cold Lake, Canada, July 12, 2008 -- Today was my last science flight for the ARCTAS mission and it was certainly one of my most memorable on the P-3. The objectives accomplished on this approximately 7 hour flight included an intercomparison with the NASA DC-8, a detailed study on the emissions generated from the refineries at Fort McMurray, and a one last hurrah of sampling pyrocumulus plumes from fires north of Lake Athabasca.

I always enjoy the intercomparisons with the aircraft. Not only are they critical for validating our instrument data across multiple aircraft platforms, but the skill with which they are executed is a remarkable sight. In past missions, I've witnessed other intercomparisons, but always on the DC-8 looking out. I've seen both the NOAA and NASA P-3's from the DC-8, and I finally got the chance to be on the other side. It was truly amazing just to look out the window of the P-3 and see the DC-8 on the right side, nearly wingtip to wingtip, slowly moving up and down with the air currents. While it is not likely I will ever forget this moment, I had to take several video clips and photos to save for all time. I have posted a few of these here, so that you can see firsthand what it is like.

While I would have loved to just look out the window and marvel at the DC-8, there was real science that needed to be accomplished during this intercomparison. Because I have instruments on both aircraft, it was critical that I got them both aligned perfectly and measuring at exactly the same conditions at exactly the same time. In order to do this, I had to communicate with the DC-8 through a messaging software we have on both planes (in theory I could have just held up a sign). It's kind of like instant messaging, but in mid-air flying on a plane. Chatting with investigators on the DC-8 while monitoring my instrument, we got them both synched up nicely.

Aside from work, Cold Lake is a quiet little town and since very few of us have rental cars, most of us have stayed on base. Many people purchased cheap bikes to ride into town or go to the lake. It is certainly different, but I think many have found this mission to be a lot more fun because we all get to interact and socialize together in the evenings. In big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or even Fairbanks, everyone split off in different groups and went their separate ways, so it was much harder to get to know everyone. Here in Cold Lake, it is very much a camp-like atmosphere. We work hard during the day, and play even harder in the evenings. While we may go our separate ways during the day, we all come together for breakfast, lunch and dinner at the mess hall. After dinner, Club 41 on base has been quite the popular hang-out among our crew, because there is a variety of entertainment from pool, foosball, darts and horseshoes. I have had a lot of fun playing pool and foosball with my colleagues here and have made many new friends in the process.

But now it is time to say our goodbyes, off-load our instruments, pack up our things and head for home, sweet home. Many of us have been on the road since February, and the chance to settle back into normal life will be great indeed. We will all certainly meet again, whether it is the next mission or a conference down the road. Until then, we will just sit back on our smooth, commercial flights back home, reflect on the memories, and ponder the meaning of our exciting data sets.

Mike Obland: Grounded

Yellowknife, Canada, July 7, 2008 – Day 14 – Today was to become the first overnight trip out of Yellowknife of the campaign, called a Return Over Night, or RON, trip. The whole point of this RON is to position the B-200 in southern Canada so that we can make measurements of fires burning in that region with the P-3 tomorrow. The original plan was to leave for Edmonton later today because Kirk is waiting for a shipment of liquid nitrogen to come in so that he can keep the RSP instrument cool during the RON. The bottle of nitrogen that was delivered when he arrived in Yellowknife was faulty and the nitrogen boiled off quite a bit quicker than usual, so he had to order another bottle. With all of the shipping difficulties that we have had up here, it probably was no surprise that his nitrogen was days late in arriving. Because of the lack of nitrogen to cool RSP, we were unable to take data on a few of his infra-red wavelengths during the last flight, so it was important that we get RSP cooled down again to take data at all wavelengths, which is optimal for RSP measurements.

The liquid nitrogen was supposed to arrive this morning, RSP would be filled, and the crew would be on their way to Edmonton. Instead, the opportunity came up to do a coordinated flight with the P-3 on the way to Edmonton, so the decision was made to leave as soon as possible, fly to Cold Lake to refuel and get liquid nitrogen for RSP, and then fly a coordinated flight with the P-3 before landing for the night in Edmonton. That is exactly what Les, Mike, Dale and Ray did. Of course, very shortly after the B-200 took off, the bottle of liquid nitrogen arrived.

I sure hate seeing the airplane take off without me. I would much rather be flying than watching the data stream in on the ground. Yet, with half of the team gone, Ed, Mark, Kirk, Barbara and I had the rest of the day and some of tomorrow to ourselves. We stayed at our airport office until about noon monitoring the flight to make sure that the instrument and airplane did not have any problems. The five of us then went to lunch at the Wildcat Café, a Yellowknife establishment that has been serving food since the gold mining days of the early 1900s. The food was excellent, and we sat out in the sunshine on the patio.

With the rest of the afternoon free, I decided to explore some of the local sights and do a little souvenir shopping. I went to the visitor center and learned all about Yellowknife’s current economical driver: the diamond mines. Yellowknife was initially famous for its gold mines, and around the time those mines were exhausted, diamonds were discovered in the area. There are several huge mines running and being built in the area. From there, I picked up some souvenirs and went back to the hotel to workout and monitor the afternoon flight. The crew wound up flying in far southwestern Alberta, almost in British Columbia. We are certainly covering a large part of Canada on this trip!

With the end of our campaign approaching at the end of this week or early next week, we are now trying to finish all of the groceries in our rooms. Kirk and Barbara invited me over for dinner to help with their groceries, and I, of course, obliged. We shared stories about graduate school and other science campaigns for several hours, knowing that tomorrow will be free until the King Air arrives in the afternoon.