Eagle sees clouds

This is an example of the Eagle data: A cloud "image" at 646 nm wavelength from Deebles Point, and the (uncalibrated) radiance spectra of a cloudy pixel inside the red box (top) and a clear-sky pixel (bottom). Eagle "images" are a bit tricky as their coordinates are not x and y but x and t.

ACTOS & HELIOS

Our continuous all-sky camera at Deebles Point caught this image of the heli with ACTOS and HELIOS yesterday. The fence is that of the MPI station.

First ACTOS flight

Today, we performed the first flight with ACTOS and SMART-Helios. The aim of this flight was to test the setup and to provide data for a comparison with MPI observations. Therefore, all flight activity was off the coast close to Deebles Point with a few low-level flights. Since PICT and the SMPS were both not running we decided to avoid cloud contact and measured profiles from 30 to 2000 m with a special focus on cloud base height. A few legs in 50 m above sea level completed the flight pattern. After a first look into the data, all devices were running without obvious problems.

The picture shows ACTOS passing by the MPI station at Deebles Point in a height of 60 m above sea level.

The Eagle has landed

One of the new instruments in this second part of CARRIBA is the hyperspectral imager Eagle, which we have installed at the MPI research site at Deebles Point. We bought it only very recently, and it seems to operate fine and we'd like to thank MPI Hamburg for providing us with the spot and proper voltage supply. The Eagle will spectrally scan the clouds passing over Deebles Point whenever ACTOS and HELIOS are airborne.

CARRIBA 2.0 (beta)

We are back!
Since April 1st the whole crew (old and new) is back in Barbados.
The instruments are being tested and a dummy flight was performed on April 4th.
Again, the HELIOS dummy was destroyed.
Most instruments seem to work fine, with the exception of the SMPS and Tina's PICT, but support is on the way.
Today we plan to perform the first science flight with ACTOS and HELIOS, we'll keep you posted.

CARRIBA 2011 - Back to Barbados!

Hello,
pretty soon we will be back on Barbados for the second campaign of the CARRIBA project. Helicopter flights are scheduled for the period from April 4th to April 26th and flight reports will be posted again after each flight!

Bye bye Barbados

The last measurement flight during our first Barbados campaign was done on Saturday (27.11.). As the picture shows two low cloud levels were present: one at ~600 m and a secon one at ~ 1900 m. After take-off we flew ~ 60 m above sea level to the south. There, we started a vertical profile up to 8000 ft to the east. Due to strong wind from the east, the ground speed was almost zero. During the profile, we passed both cloud layers and decided to perform measurements in both of them. We started with a horizontal leg in the upper cloud layer, followed by few vertical profiles through this layer.
After that, we went down and tried to catch some of the low-level cumuli without the second layer above. This was difficult to realize since there were only few of these clouds in the range we could reach within our flight time. But we got some and the quicklook showed obviously some particle bursts at cloud edges.
That was the last measurement flight for this year, but we are planning to come back next year!

Bye, bye barbados! We enjoyed the last month and our stay here and collected enough exciting data to spend the whole german winter with them...