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MRF A773 EXPORT flight: Airborne atmospheric and chemistry measurements taken on board the Met Office C-130 Hercules aircraft

The primary objective of the European eXport of Precursors and Ozone by long-Range Transport (EXPORT) project is to characterise and quantify the photochemical air pollution both forming over Europe and being exported eastwards from Europe. The data held at BADC was collected during a co-ordinated 3 aircraft flying campaign in August 2000 based at Oberpfaffenhofen in Southern Germany. Measurements were made of many photochemical parameters including ozone, its precursors, other oxidants and both gas phase and particulate tracers in the air over Europe and that being transported eastwards out of Europe.

This dataset contains airborne atmospheric and chemistry measurements taken on board the Met Office C-130 Hercules aircraft flight A773 for the EXPORT project. The flight was over southern and eastern Germany.

Transport of Pollution through a Warm Conveyor Belt

From Oberpfaffenhofen the route was first to the far SW of Germany. However, in order to avoid the worst of the cloud (for the NOxy calibration) some retracing of our steps was required. Once at the south western waypoint, the plan was then to cross the front in a square wave pattern, travelling in a north eastern direction and increasing in altitude between runs. This was carried out successfully. We remained within the belt of cloud for much of the flight.

The flight appears to have been rather successful. Certainly transport of CO, HCHO, NOx and NOy (including PAN), out of the boundary layer, was very clear. The highest CO mixing ratios (ca. 150 ppb) were found at around 10:40 during a run at FL100. PAN at this time was estimated to be nearly 1 ppb. The following runs at FL120 and FL140 also showed elevated CO etc but CO maxima decreased with altitude. Whether all of the transport was due to the conveyor or if some of it was due to convection remains to be seen. The mixing ratio of ozone throughout the cloudy region was fairly constant (around 50 - 60 ppb); indicating that there had been limited photochemical processing.

Once clear of the northern edge of the cloud, the aircrew carried out a 50ft approach to an airfield in Leipzig. This allowed sampling of the boundary layer in the region and was quite a contrast to the rest of the flight. High SO2 readings (ca. 2 ppb) and high NOx readings (TECO NOx ca. 18 ppb) were observed but it should be noted that these were not concurrent: the maximum in NOx following that in SO2 by ca. 5 mins. During this time period the CN was off scale (the CO peaked at around 200 ppb and ozone was reduced to around 30ppb). The high concentrations of primary pollutants were unsurprising given the observation of large industrial chimneys etc in the area.

There were a fair number of instrument problems. The lower jNO2 and jO1D radiometers were found to go to full-scale for short periods. The HORACE TAS and TAT were clearly erroneous for a period of around half-an-hour starting at around 9:45 GMT. The flow in the PSAP instrument could not be maintained and missing 'O' rings needed replacing at the beginning of the flight. The FWVS was also found to drop down to -70.5°C fairly regularly. Early problems with the CO instrument (blown fuse) were soon rectified. All other chemistry equipment appeared to work well, despite the very wet conditions.

The Met Office midday analysis showed the surface cold front stretching from Northern France to the triple point at the Baltic Sea. The path across Germany was fairly closely matched by the flight plan.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2006-12-10T03:09:18
Date (Creation)
2006-12-10T03:09:18
Identifier
https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/a61e04ec5b3d480bbfdeb375b4f29f82
Identifier
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / a61e04ec5b3d480bbfdeb375b4f29f82
Author
  EXPORT campaign participants - author
Author
  Met Office - author
Met Office , FitzRoy Road , Exeter , EX1 3PB ,
0370 900 0100
Author
  Unavailable - Bandy, Brian ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Brough, Neil ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Carney, R. ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Green, Tim ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Kent, J. ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Lewis, Alastair C. ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - McQuaid, Jim ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Mills, Graham ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Oram, David ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Phillips, G.J. ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Purvis, Ruth Mary ( author )
Author
  Unavailable - Sturrock, Georgina ( author )
Custodian
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - custodian
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Distributor
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - distributor
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Principal investigator
  unknown - principal_investigator
Principal investigator
  Unavailable - Browning, Keith ( principal_investigator )
pointofContact
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - point_of_contact
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Publisher
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - publisher
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
Maintenance and update frequency
notPlanned Not planned
Update scope
dataset Dataset
Keywords
  • EXPORT
  • C-130
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • atmospheric conditions
Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.
Use constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
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Begin date
2000-08-02T07:27:45
End date
2000-08-02T13:30:55
Unique resource identifier
WGS 84
Distribution format
  • Data are NASA Ames formatted ()

Distributor
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) - Data Center Contact
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
OnLine resource
CEDA Data Catalogue Page

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Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Statement
Data collected by instruments on-board the MRF C-130 during flight A773. Data acquired by BADC for archiving during the EXPORT project.
File identifier
a61e04ec5b3d480bbfdeb375b4f29f82 XML
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Character set
8-bit variable size UCS Transfer Format, based on ISO/IEC 10646 UTF8
Parent identifier
European eXport of Precursors and Ozone by long-Range Transport (EXPORT) project: Aircraft Photochemical Measurements 09c6bbdf1e869d0f9c1d21dc190c4df1
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Date stamp
2025-11-15T03:10:28
Metadata standard name
UK GEMINI
Metadata standard version
2.3
Point of contact
  NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)
British Atmospheric Data Centre , STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory , Harwell Oxford , OX11 0QX , UK
+44(0)1235 446432
 
 

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Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
atmospheric conditions

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