Waiting, waiting, waiting…..


On the 18th July we were schooled in patience. We wanted to fly in the early morning, but then there was a total overcast of thick
stratocumulus so that it was impossible to take off. Observing the clouds and hoping for a gap we tried to check the instruments or have a first closer look at the data of the last days. The mood in our camp got more and more subdued. But then finally we decided to take off at 3pm which was also the last possibility for this day. Unfortunately it was not possible to fix SMART-Helios, so today it was only ACTOS hanging under the helicopter.


We started with 3 legs in 3 different heights (100m, 240m, 400m ACTOS height) below the cloud cover to get some good aerosol data to calculate the particle fluxes. During this flight the first small cloud gaps were seen, so than we did a profile through the cloud layer up to 7000ft and we could see the sun for the first time at this day. We did a leg in 7000ft to compare aerosol data with the Pico measurements.  After that the cloud people couldn’t wait any longer  so we started 5 dolphin flights through the cloud layer and inversion (850-1200m) to get cloud profiles.  But this was also interesting in terms of aerosols. We could reproduce the same shape of aerosol number concentration, LWC and temperature 5 times. The cloud layer was just below the sharp inversion.  Finally, we flew a leg within the cloud layer before we prepared to touchdown.  

The air above the clouds was so clear that Pico seemed to be even closer to the helicopter. Thus it was a good chance to take another nice picture of Pico with a big camera….

After all we had a perfect aerosol and cloud flight including a great touchdown with ACTOS. 

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