The Flux Observations of Carbon from an Airborne Laboratory (FOCAL) project is a cooperative effort among the Anderson Group from Harvard University, Aurora Flight Sciences, and NOAA's Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division (NOAA/ATDD) to add scientific instruments to a Diamond Aircraft DA-42 Twin Star aircraft to measure fluxes of CO₂ and CH₄ in the planetary boundary layer. The work, funded by the National Science Foundation in 2012, uses the Anderson Group's Integrated Cavity-Output Spectroscopy (ICOS) instrument suite to measure concentrations and isotopologues of CO₂ and CH₄, NOAA/ATDD's Best Airborne Turbulence (BAT) probe to measure atmospheric turbulence in 3-dimensions, and Aurora Flight Sciences' DA-42 Twin Star aircraft to carry the complete instrument package. The DA- 42 collected 36.9 hours of research data based from Deadhorse Airport in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in August, 2013. A flight track was created to compare the CO₂ and CH₄ flux measurements made by instruments aboard the DA-42 against a groundbased tower which made simultaneous CO₂ and CH₄ flux measurements. Flight tracks were then expanded to measure fluxes far beyond the tower comparison area. Tracks were flown over inland melt-pond lakes and the Arctic Ocean to monitor CH₄ concentrations and fluxes, as well as to compare coincident measurements of bulk water-column and in-situ tundra flux measurements made by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Tracks were also flown to characterize the background CO₂ and CH₄ concentrations around the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. This report describes the NOAA/ATDD BAT probe instrumentation and the August 2013 Alaska flight campaign. [doi:10.7289/V5/TM-OAR-ARL-267 (http://dx.doi.org/10.7289/V5/TM-OAR-ARL-267)]

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)

United States