1859 Blocked out 1907 Takeoff, Anchorage, northbound climb 1929 Passed 20,000' 1934 Level at 22,000' 2031 Entered thick, persistent, dry cloud 2106 Croossed Alaska shoreline to Beaufort Sea 2136 Began sounding to 200' 2158 Level at 200' above the ice for 30 min 2228 North of 75N, began climb and turned southward 2232 Level at 3800' for 30 min, 300' above cloud deck 2302 Sounding to 26,000'in progress to Anchorage 2340:15 Level at 26,000', near the top of an ice cloud 0050 Emerged from cloud 0132:35 Sounding from 26,000' 0148 Level at 9000'for a Tanner calibration 0157:45 End of 9000' leg, descended to Anchorge 0214 Landed Anchorage 0219 Blocked In
Something strange ocurred with the CAI, since the apparent INTAS1 (speed in the shroud) was 374 m/s at 1946, while the TASX was only 151 m/s. The sampling- plane speed was pretty consistently 10% of TASX, or 15.2 m/s at the high altitudes. INPDIFF wandered a lot, in the vicinity of 150 mbar, even when the airspeeds were constant.
The lidar was out of convergence early in the flight, but supplied useful data f from about 2022. It was showed us the extent of clouds above us (and the futility of trying to climb above them in some cases), and assured the pilots that there was clear air beneath the low clouds over the ice, so it was worth penetrating them to sample below.
The Clarke DMA wasn't working, and Russell's lost some data due to a lack of disk space. This data will be essential to resolve discrepancies between Weber's and Litchy's UCN observations: again, each occasionally saw high UCN when the other did not. Weber's were high more often, apparently. Since ground measurements and those on climbout agree fairly well, either a difference in plumbing (with losses in one or the generation of particles in the other) or sensitivity to certain size ranges must be the cause. Again, shattering of droplets in cloud caused Kik's in-cloud CN to exceed that of Litchy's similar instrument.
There were virtually no UCN in the MBL over the ice, but both systems saw significant UCN during the 9000' leg just prior to returning to Anchorage. Sulfuric acid was found on the high leg northbound (1-2x10+5 at 2027), just before penetrating the last clouds before the ice (~2155), and during the descent to 9000' (`0143). We need to look for possible coherence between UCN and H2SO4 observations. On the climb out from our BL legs, it was apparent that CN and dew point were anticorrelated: two aerosol layers were located in a dry layer.
The NO system operated much of the flight, collecting data as well as doing calibrations.
-Barry Huebert