The Social Metwork

Email:  j.maddison@pgr.reading.ac.uk

NAWDEX (North Atlantic Wave and Downstream impact Experiment) was an International field campaign led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen in cooperation with the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich and the Office of Naval Research in the USA, with many other international collaborators. Multiple aircraft were deployed from Iceland (the HALO aircraft and the DLR and Safire Falcons) and the UK (the FAAM aircraft) to take meteorological measurments with the aim of providing knowledge of mid-latitude dynamics and predictability. There was involvement from across the UK, including the University of Reading, the University of Manchester, and the Met Office as well as from the FAAM.

The NAWDEX operations centre was based in Keflavik, Iceland (number 27 in Figure 1), which I visited for a week to join the campaign as one of the representatives from the University of Reading, UK. I was tasked with being the ground-based observation coordinator.

Figure 1: Radiosonde launch locations for the campaign.

A Europe-wide network of radiosonde launch locations (Figure 1) had been readied for additional launches during the NAWDEX period. Our role was to choose sites to launch sondes from that would complement measurements taken by the aircraft and/or support one of the NAWDEX objectives. Of particular interest was downstream high impact weather events over Europe. It was great to be given real responsibility and be able to actually contribute to the NAWDEX project.

Below is a typical daily schedule I would have in Iceland:

Daily schedule:

UK call: 8:30am Icelandic. Conference call between UK parties discussing plans for the coming days and any updates from Iceland or the UK.

General meeting: 12pm Icelandic. Go over brief weather summary, instrument status reports, flight plans for the coming days and reports of previous flights.

Weather meeting: 4pm Icelandic. Detailed look at the weather situation for the short and medium-ranges, highlighting key features that would be of interest to fly into, e.g. extratropical transitions of tropical cyclones (which we were fortunate to observe more than once). Radiosonde launch updates.

In between: assessing forecasts and flight plans for the coming days and meeting with scientists for their input to decide where we want to launch radiosondes from. Along with preparing slides to present to the group proposed launch locations and emailing various meteorological services to request the launches (the most time consuming).

My time in Iceland was a great learning experience. Working with some of the pre-eminent scientists in the fields of dynamics and predictability (and spending most of the day discussing the weather!) really helped improve my understanding of the development of mid-latitude weather systems and better understand their predictability.

Figure 2: On-board the FAAM aircraft.

After returning from Iceland I got the opportunity to fly on the FAAM aircraft (Figure 2) whilst it was on a mission for another project. The flight aim was to perform a radiometer inter-comparison by taking coordinated measurements of deep-frontal cloud to the north of Scotland with the HALO and Safire aircraft. The flight was remarkably turbulent free (I‘d been hoping for more of a roller coaster ride), although we did perform a profile right through the cloud to an altitude of less than 50 ft, which was pretty fun! Whilst on the aircraft we were also able to plot measurements being taken in real time on an on-board computer.

Figure 3: Flying at an altitude of 35 ft.

NAWDEX was a great opportunity to get first-hand experience of a major international field campaign (and see some of Iceland).