A high-altitude long-range aircraft configured as a cloud observatory: The NARVAL expeditions

Bjorn Stevens (1) , Felix Ament (2) , Sandrine Bony (3) , Susanne Crewell (4) , Florian Ewald (5) , Silke Gross (5) , Akio Hansen (2) , Lutz Hirsch (1) , Marek Jacob (6) , Tobias Kölling (7) , Heike Konow (2) , Bernhard Mayer (7) , Manfred Wendisch (8) , Martin Wirth (5) , Kevin Wolf (8) , Stephan Bakan (1) , Matthias Bauer-Pfundstein (9) , Matthias Brueck (1) , Julien Delanoë (10) , André Ehrlich (8) , David Farrell (11) , Marvin Forde (11) , Felix Gödde (7) , Hans Grob (7) , Martin Hagen (5) , Evelyn Jäkel (12) , Friedhelm Jansen (1) , Christian Klepp (2) , Marcus Klingebiel (1) , Mario Mech (6) , Gerhard Peters (9) , Markus Rapp (5) , Allison Wing (13) , Tobias Zinner (7)

1 MPI-M - Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie
2 UHH - Universität Hamburg
3 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
4 Institut für Geophysik und Meteorologie [Köln]
5 IPA - DLR Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre
6 Universität zu Köln = University of Cologne
7 LMU - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
8 LIM - Leipziger Institut für Meteorologie
9 METEK - Meteorologische Messtechnik GmbH
10 SPACE - LATMOS
11 CIMH - Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology
12 Universität Leipzig
13 FSU - Florida State University [Tallahassee]

A configuration of HALO (the High-Altitude LOng-range research aircraft) as a remote sensing cloud observatory is described and its use is illustrated with results from the first and second NARVAL (Next-generation Aircraft Remote-sensing for VALidation) field studies. Measurements from NARVAL2 are used to highlight the ability of HALO, when configured in this fashion, to characterize not only the distribution of water condensate in the atmosphere, but also its impact on radiant energy transfer and the co-varying large-scale meteorological conditions – including the large-scale velocity field, and its vertical component. The NARVAL campaigns with HALO demonstrate the potential of airborne cloud observatories to address long-standing riddles in studies of the coupling between clouds and circulation, and are helping to motivate a new generation of field studies.

Domains: Meteorology; Ocean, Atmosphere

Bjorn Stevens, Felix Ament, Sandrine Bony, Susanne Crewell, Florian Ewald, et al.. A high-altitude long-range aircraft configured as a cloud observatory: The NARVAL expeditions. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2019, 100 (6), pp.1061-1077. ⟨10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0198.1⟩. ⟨insu-01989926⟩