Vertical sounding balloons for long duration flights

Malaterre, Pierre‐Olivier

doi:10.1016/0273-1177(94)90069-8

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Similar free-floating balloons have been used for many years to characterize transport and measure trajectories (e.g., Lally, 1967;Banta, 1976;Zak, 1983;Malaterre, 1993;Knudsen and Carver, 1994;Stohl, 1998;Businger et al, 1999;Johnson et al, 2000;Riddle et al, 2006;Mao et al, 2006;Zaveri et al, 2010a, b). These efforts have generally focused on tracking the horizontal motion of air masses or equivalently volumes of air that are sufficiently large to maintain their physical and chemical identity over a time period of interest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

et al. 2010

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One of the major objectives of the Megacities Initiative: Local And Global Research Observations (MILAGRO-2006) campaign was to investigate the long-range transport of polluted Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) outflow and determine its downwind impacts on air quality and climate. Six research aircraft, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) C-130, made extensive chemical, aerosol, and radiation measurements above MCMA and more than 1000 km downwind in order to characterize the evolution of the outflow as it aged and dispersed over the Mesa Alta, Sierra Madre Oriental, Coastal Plain, and Gulf of Mexico. As part of this effort, free-floating Controlled-Meteorological (CMET) balloons, commanded to change altitude via satellite, made repeated profile measurements of winds and state variables within the advecting outflow. In this paper, we present an analysis of the data from two CMET balloons that were launched near Mexico City on the afternoon of 18 March 2006 and floated downwind with the MCMA pollution for nearly 30 h. The repeating profile measurements show the evolving structure of the outflow in considerable detail: its stability and stratification, interaction with other air masses, mixing episodes, and dispersion into the regional background. Air parcel trajectories, computed directly from the balloon wind profiles, show three transport pathways on 18–19 March: (a) high-altitude advection of the top of the MCMA mixed layer, (b) mid-level outflow over the Sierra Madre Oriental followed by decoupling and isolated transport over the Gulf of Mexico, and (c) low-level outflow with entrainment into a cleaner northwesterly jet above the Coastal Plain. The C-130 aircraft intercepted the balloon-based trajectories three times on 19 March, once along each of these pathways; in all three cases, peaks in urban tracer concentrations and LIDAR backscatter are consistent with MCMA pollution. In comparison with the transport models used in the campaign, the balloon-based trajectories appear to shear the outflow far more uniformly and decouple it from the surface, thus forming a thin but expansive polluted layer over the Gulf of Mexico that is well aligned with the aircraft observations. These results provide critical context for the extensive aircraft measurements made during the 18–19 March MCMA outflow event and may have broader implications for modelling and understanding long-range transport

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

et al. 2010

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“…To support the goals of the MILAGRO campaign, our group contributed newly developed Controlled Meteorological (CMET) balloons to measure trajectories and evolving state parameters during long-range transport events (Voss et al, 2005(Voss et al, , 2009. Similar free-floating balloons have been used for many years to characterize transport and measure trajectories (e.g., Lally, 1967;Banta, 1976;Zak, 1983;Malaterre, 1993;Knudsen and Carver, 1994;Stohl, 1998;Businger et al, 1999;Johnson et al, 2000;Riddle et al, 2006;Mao et al, 2006;Zaveri et al, 2010a, b). These efforts have generally focused on tracking the horizontal motion of air masses or equivalently volumes of air that are sufficiently large to maintain their physical and chemical identity over a time period of interest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

Voss¹,

Zaveri²,

Flocke³

et al. 2010

Preprint

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Abstract. One of the major objectives of the Megacities Initiative: Local And Global Research Observations (MILAGRO-2006) campaign was to investigate the long-range transport of polluted Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) outflow and determine its downwind impacts on air quality and climate. Six research aircraft, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) C-130, made extensive chemical, aerosol, and radiation measurements above MCMA and more than 1000 km downwind in order to characterize the evolution of the outflow as it aged and dispersed over the Mesa Alta and Gulf of Mexico. As part of this effort, free-floating Controlled-Meteorological (CMET) balloons, commanded to change altitude via satellite, made repeated profile measurements of winds and state variables within the advecting outflow. In this paper, we present an analysis based on the data from two CMET balloons that were launched near Mexico City on the afternoon of 18 March 2006 and floated downwind with the MCMA pollution for nearly 30 h. The repeating profile measurements show the evolving structure of the outflow in considerable detail: its stability and stratification, interaction with other air masses, mixing episodes, and dispersion into the regional background. Air parcel trajectories, computed directly from the balloon wind profiles, show three different transport pathways on 18–19 March: (a) high-altitude advection of the top of the MCMA mixed layer, (b) mid-level outflow over the Sierra Madre Oriental followed by decoupling and isolated transport over the Gulf, and (c) low-altitude outflow with entrainment into a cleaner westerly jet below the plateau. The C-130 aircraft intercepted the balloon-based trajectories three times on 19 March, once along each of these pathways. In all three cases, distinct peaks in the urban tracer signatures and LIDAR backscatter imagery were consistent with MCMA pollution. The coherence of the high-altitude outflow was well preserved after one day whereas that lower in the atmosphere was more widely dispersed over the same time period. Other C-130 intercepts of polluted air are shown to have likely originated outside of MCMA. These findings, and the aircraft intercepts in particular, should prove useful in answering a range of scientific questions pertaining to the transport, transformation, and downwind impacts of megacity air pollution.

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Continuous In-Situ Soundings in the Arctic Boundary Layer: A New Atmospheric Measurement Technique Using Controlled Meteorological Balloons

Voss

Hole

Helbling

et al. 2012

J Intell Robot Syst

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Vertical sounding balloons for long duration flights

Cited by 5 publications

References 1 publication

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

Long-range pollution transport during the MILAGRO-2006 campaign: a case study of a major Mexico City outflow event using free-floating altitude-controlled balloons

Continuous In-Situ Soundings in the Arctic Boundary Layer: A New Atmospheric Measurement Technique Using Controlled Meteorological Balloons

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