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MRF A775 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 A775 for the EXPORT project. The flight was over Germany, Austria, Czech and Slovak Reps, and Poland.

Study of PBL Air over Czech Republic and southern Poland contrasted with Uplifted (N. American) air at ca. 25,000ft

The aim of the experiment was to observe two areas of polluted air, as forecast by RDF trajectory forecasts and the NILU model. The first area was forecast to be over the Czech Republic / southern Poland at low levels and the second was forecast to be over southern Poland / Germany at higher altitudes (ca. 26,000 to 29,000ft. Both the Mystere and Falcon aircraft only planned to sample the higher altitude polluted layer. The results from the Mystere were planned to feed back to the C-130, after sampling the low level air. Indeed communications from the Mystere were passed to the C-130 but probably made little difference to the eventual plan.

The flight was very interesting. The main science started with a profile into an airfield at Ostrava, Czech Republic. Bottles were filled during the descent into the airfield. These should show 'chemical age' difference above and below the boundary layer. Below the inversion at around FL045, a rather heavily polluted boundary layer was sampled in the Czech Republic / southern Poland. Several runs were carried out in this air, mostly at an altitude of approximately 3,000ft above ground. The flight area was mostly very heavily polluted, with several factory chimneys and at least one power station that was passed several times. Once above a more rural area the levels of primary pollutants dropped significantly, possibly indicating that a significant fraction of the primary pollutant concentrations were due to the local sources. The aircraft remained in the PBL for quite some time. This was partly due to the requests of the mission scientists but also because of having to wait to go into Polish airspace.

The second part of the flight was at higher level, between ca. 26,000 and 29,000ft, in order to sample uplifted air forecast to be of N. American origin. The air was certainly rich in CO (up to around 100ppb) but interestingly the ozone was anti-correlated with the CO. It is possible that the air had been uplifted in convection, in which case the ozone concentration might be anti-correlated with the CO, if there has been insufficient time for photochemical processing. Alternatively, boundary layer air (from either N. America or Europe) may have mixed with dry, ozone-rich UTLS air.

Most instruments performed well, the exception being the PSAP, which was very noisy. The NOxy worked well but reported loss of flow into the NOy1 inlet (NOy minus HNO3), above ca. FL240.

Meteorology

The surface chart showed a weak ridge of high pressure over central Europe. The midday analysis showed a frontal feature stretching from the North Sea, across NE Germany and into Southern Poland. Some troughing of the upper air.

Simple

Date (Publication)
2006-12-10T03:09:18
Date (Creation)
2006-12-10T03:09:18
Identifier
https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/e59b89e87dd646519cefc38d67879a9d
Identifier
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / e59b89e87dd646519cefc38d67879a9d
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
2000-08-09T07:47:53
End date
2000-08-09T14:04:10
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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Conformance result

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Statement
Data collected by instruments on-board the MRF C-130 during flight A775. Data acquired by BADC for archiving during the EXPORT project.
File identifier
e59b89e87dd646519cefc38d67879a9d 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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