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Notes from the Field

Viewing Posts from September 2014

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    Picturing Sea Ice with ARISE’s Digital Camera Instrument

    Flying above, below and through clouds in the Arctic gives the ARISE C-130 a different perspective on the world below. Nowhere is this more apparent than through the lenses of ARISE’s digital camera instrument. This instrument – one of many   ARISE uses – captures views of clouds, ocean and ice that are both scenic and […]

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    Bringing It All Together: Planning ARISE

    Eielson Air Force Base, Fairbanks, Alaska, day 9 of our deployment: We are currently sitting together in our mission support and flight planning room, next to the Thunderdome Hangar on base. We have appropriately named this room, where we dedicate up to 10 hours each day, our WAR room – where we passionately discuss which […]

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    Flying With ARISE

    Editor’s note: The following is a first-hand account of ARISE survey flights by one of the mission’s researchers.   Day 1 (Sep-11-2014) My first ARISE day started early in the morning after a late arrival into Fairbanks on the night before. This important mission’s goal is to map the sea ice and understand the relation between […]

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    May the 4STAR Be With You

    The Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research, or 4STAR, is an airborne instrument that measures aerosols (small particles suspended in the atmosphere), gases (ozone for example), and a variety of cloud properties. Currently it is being deployed on the NASA C-130 aircraft on its quest to measure aerosol and cloud properties in the Arctic, helping to […]

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    Aerosol Measurements in Hurricane Cristobal

    After a lengthy waiting period, we have successfully deployed our instrumentation to make aerosol measurements inside a tropical storm/hurricane. As of our last post, instrumentation was mounted aboard the NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft but we were awaiting installation of an inlet.  This is not a trivial task, as any structure mounted to the exterior of […]

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    Mangroves, Mud, and More

    Mangrove forests are disappearing faster than any other tropical environment. NASA scientists are working to understand how human activities coupled with land use/ land cover change have altered mangrove environments.

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    Preparing for the Trip North

    A new NASA airborne campaign known as ARISE, or the Arctic Radiation – IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment, will take measurements intended to help researchers better understand the role that clouds play in Arctic warming as sea ice conditions change. From Sep. 3 to Oct. 3, researchers flying aboard NASA’s C-130 research aircraft will measure […]

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