ATom-2 RF04 03 February 2017 Kona - Nadi
Our fourth research flight brought us from to Kona, Hawaii to Nadi, Fiji across both the equator and over the international date line a number of times. As we departed from Kona, the winds were picking up and the volcanic smog (vog) was beginning to lift from over the island.
We crossed the chemical equator at about 2oN when all the long lived gas species dropped. The southern hemisphere is a much smaller source of most human emitted gases and mixing between the northern and southern hemisphere is slow so concentrations of many trace gases are smaller: CO went from background values of about 80 ppb to less than 50 ppb, while CO2, CH4, O3, NOy all dropped at the same time.
We had to modify our planned flight track as large scale weather systems spang up as we completed our flight. Meteorologist Eric Ray was on hand to advise our navigator Steve to allow us to replot our course. Here Steve Wofsy and Eric Ray (Mission Science) pose with an RF04 poster.
When we landed in beautiful and green Fiji, we rented cars to bring us to the hotel. It was good to be back driving on the ‘correct’ side of the road although getting back into left hand drive thinking took a little time after 9+ hours of flying.
We spent the morning of our day in Fiji at the aircraft preparing for RF05 the next day but that left us a little time to get groceries. And an epic volley ball game developed between scientists and crew before dinner while I lounged in the shade of the pool (I’m too short to be useful at volleyball!). The only winner from that game seemed to be the sun who managed to claim a few sunburn victims.
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