CCN measurements on ACTOS

On board of ACTOS we have a miniaturized CCNc, contributed by Greg Roberts, who is here in Barbados with us. The instrument has been measuring very reliably during all of the 5 flights we had so far, and once ACTOS is back in place, the data can be viewed almost immediately (within minutes, really). This is a very nice feature, as it can give us some clues about what was sampled during the flights, and this then can tell us which heights might be interesting for the second flight of the day.

The way the mini-CCNc was set up so far, it measured CCN at a super-saturation of 0.3%. The plots show the CCN number concentration measured during the initial profiles of 4 of the 5 different flights (the morning flight of yesterday, Nov. 12^th, is not shown). Both, yesterday and today, the data collected during the morning and the afternoon flight were not much different, while the day to day variability and the variations with heights are stronger than we had expected.

Let’s see which additional surprises might be hidden in the now constantly increasing amount of data.