Berlin 2012 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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UP: Fachverband Umweltphysik

UP 9: Poster session

UP 9.24: Poster

Mittwoch, 28. März 2012, 18:30–19:15, Poster F

Investigating the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) using the NASA Global Hawk: First DOAS results from the ATTREX test mission in fall 2011 — •Bodo Werner¹, Klaus Pfeilsticker¹, Max Spolaor², and Jochen Stutz² — ¹IUP, University of Heidelberg — ²University of California Los Angeles

The investigation of chemical and physical processes in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is challenging, in particular over the Pacific Ocean, as few airborne platforms are able to reach the required altitudes of 15-20km in this region. The Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX) is a new NASA project that makes use of NASA's new Global Hawk UAV platform to study the chemistry and physics in the TTL. The IUP/UCLA collaboration developed a novel limb scanning 3 channel (UV/vis/near-IR) mini-DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) spectrometer to fly on NASA's Global Hawk. Major scientific foci of the mini-DOAS are to study the photochemistry and budget of ozone destroying radicals (e.g. NO2, BrO, CH2O, IO, OClO), the amount of atmospheric greenhouse constituents (e.g. gaseous H2O), and the abundance of liquid and solid water cloud particles and their optical properties and microphysics within the TTL.

Here we introduce the NASA ATTREX project and discuss the major features of the mini-DOAS instrument. We also present results from the first ATTREX mission in fall 2011, during which three 18 - 24 hours long flights from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California into the eastern Pacific TTL were successfully performed.