Flight #9

Today we started our measurement flight at 9:45 local. Directly after departure we performed a horizontal leg with ACTOS at 200 ft above sea level heading to our measurement area near Ragged Point. After reaching this area we began to ascent for a vertical profile up to 8000 ft heading north. During the ascent we recognized a field of small cumuli slightly north of our measurement area and we decided to hunt for them.All systems seemed to work well and we were lucky to catch more cumuli on our way back into the intended measurement area. Arriving there, unfortunately, nearly all clouds disappeared so we stopped cloud hunting to focus on aerosols. Therefore, we performed horizontal legs at 3000 ft and 1600 ft (helicopter) and in between a couple of vertical profiles (like porpoise dives) to characterize conditions near cloud base. First quicklooks from the aerosol data point to weaker dust concentrations which can also be verified by the MPI lidar quicklook.