ATom-2 RF02 29 January 2017 Palmdale - Anchorage
Our second research flight brought us from Palmdale, California to Anchorage, Alaska.
Doors opened at 6.30am just as the sun was rising on Palmdale and we had many hours of twilight as we dipped over Deadhorse and Barrow (now know as Utqiaġvik on the north coast of Alaska. Sunrise in Palmale from the cockpit of the DC8 looked pretty special (left).
I’m trying to continue taking photos with a sign indicating the flight. It’ll be a good way to tell how much we age through the whole project!
While most of our flight sampled tropospheric air, we also sampled air in the stratosphere, with ozone mixing ratios topping out at 990 ppb - we were taking bets (for bragging rights) on ozone hitting 1 ppm (1000 ppb) but alas, we didn’t see it. In the stratosphere, the CO was the lowest I’ve ever seen (17 ppb) and N2O also dropped and we estimated that the air in the stratosphere last saw the surface of the earth about 6 years ago. It was like looking back in time! CO and N2O are low in the stratosphere for different reasons; CO only lives for a month (on average) and doesn’t mix into the stratosphere but N2O gets destroyed by the same UV light that produces ozone in the stratosphere.
There was just enough light in twilight for us to see the thin and broken sea ice just to the west of Barrow. By the end of January, the sea ice is usually more complete and thicker but 2016 saw the minimum of both arctic and antarctic sea ice, which hasn’t yet recovered.
After seeing the broken and new sea ice at 78oN last August, I’m not as surprised about the lack of solid sea ice near Barrow but it was still disappointing to see…
I posted videos of our 500 ft run over the Gulf of Alaska and our missed approach at BRW to Twitter. Click on the links to watch those videos.
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