We finally had a successful boundary layer flight on the 8th
February 1997. The flight started with a high level dropsonde run,
starting over the ocean flying towards the sea-ice boundary and the
Labrador coastline, parallel to the direction of the low level winds.
We descended to low levels over the sea ice and flew 3 sets of stacks,
each stack involving sections at 500, 1000 and 1500 feet (one on top
of the other). The first stack was over the sea ice, the second was
over mainly open water (perhaps 3/10 ice) the third stack was well
over the ocean.
The flight track was carefully designed to allow a
Lagrangian sampling of the boundary layer. We have been able to
capture the structure of the convective rolls (cloud streets)
and also estimate the surface heat flux from the ocean into the
atmosphere from this flight.
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AVHRR infra-red satellite image at 11:19 UTC 8th February 1997, the stacks are annoted in red, the location of the ship at 12GMT is annotated in green.
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A close up at the same time 11:19 UTC, the three
stacks are annotated in red.
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Clouds and sea ice on the plane ferry north |
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Sea ice and leads from 500 feet |
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Shadows of cloud streets over the sea ice |
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Fog streamers and sea ice from 500 feet |
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Fog streamers and sea ice from 500 feet |
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Langmuir cells illustrated by the sea ice from 500 feet |
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Over the marginal ice zone |
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Cloud streets |
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Sea ice plates - pressure ridges |
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Over sea ice from 500 feet |
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Langmuir Cells in the ocean |