NAWDEX
North Atlantic Waveguide and Downstream Impact Experiment
Mission status: Completed
Persons in Charge
Mission-PI
George Craig, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), Meteorological Institute Munich (MIM)
Mission coordinator
Andreas Schäfler, DLR, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Oberpfaffenhofen
Contact point at DLR-FX for this mission:
HALO Project Management: Katrin Witte
Postal address:
DLR Oberpfaffenhofen
Flugexperimente (FX)
Münchener Str. 20
82234 Weßling
Germany
Office phone:
+49 (0)8153 28-1357
HALO Deployment Base
Time Period
Sept 14 – Oct 25, 2016
Different campaign phases:
Note, that the NAWDEX mission shares the same payload with the NARVAL 2 mission, which starts before NAWDEX. So in the following table the time periods for instrument integration and tests are identical with the NARVAL 2 preparation phase.
| Mission phase | Dates |
|---|---|
| Payload integration | 20 Jun 2016 - 15 Jul 2016 |
| EMI test flight | 18 Jul 2016 - 22 Jul 2016 |
| Instrument tests (on ground) | 25 Jul 2016 - 5 Aug 2016 |
| NARVAL 2 Mission in Barbados | 8 Aug 2016 - 31 Aug 2016 |
| Break between missions | 1 Sep 2016 - 13 Sep 2016 |
| Ferry flight Oberpfaffenhofen-Keflavik | 17 Sep 2016 |
| Mission in Keflavik | 17 Sep 2016 - 18 Oct 2016 |
| Ferry flight Keflavik-Oberpfaffenhofen | 18 Oct 2016 |
| Instrument dismount | 19 Oct 2016 - 21 Oct 2016 |
Project description
NAWDEX is part of a broad, international field experiment under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) program High Impact Weather (HIW). An international consortium from the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany is preparing a multi-aircraft campaign over the North Atlantic, supported by enhanced surface observations, over the North Atlantic and European region. The overarching scientific aim of NAWDEX is to increase the physical understanding and to quantify the effects of diabatic processes on disturbances to the jet stream near North America, their influence on downstream propagation across the North Atlantic, and consequences for high-impact weather in Europe. The field campaign will provide a unique observational dataset, sampling the key dynamics and processes associated with the triggering, propagation and downstream impact of disturbances along the North Atlantic waveguide.
Schematic of the NAWDEX operation area and the different weather systems that are expected to impact the mid-latitude waveguide. In light blue tropical systems, in red midlatitude cyclones and in green tropopause polar vorticies that impact the evolution of Rossby waves and eventually trigger high impact weather over Europe.
For details on the international science objectives of NAWDEX please refer to the NAWDEX international webpage: www.nawdex.org
The German contribution NAWDEX aims at locating and quantifying errors in the numerical representation of midlatitude Rossby waves that are related to diabatic processes. Therefore remote sensing measurements with HALO will be carried out to obtain a comprehensive picture of the thermodynamic structure near jet streams and to quantify the impact of diabatic processes for the weather evolution over Europe. NAWDEX will study the physical processes responsible for modification, propagation and downstream impact of Rossby waves on a transatlantic scale over many days in a quasi-Lagrangian experiment. The combined airborne measurements will take place in September and October 2016. This research campaign will generate new knowledge in the field of mid-latitude dynamic meteorology.
For details on the research aims please refer to the German NAWDEX webpage: http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/nawdex/
To maximize the scientific impact of the data set, NAWDEX is closely linked to a number of institutions both on a national and an international level. The Meteorologisches Institut of the LMU Munich coordinates a proposal for a Collaborative Research Center SFB-TransRegio Waves to Weather (http://www.w2w.meteo.physik.uni-muenchen.de/). The aim of this group is the investigation of the same nonlinear dynamical and physical processes that are the central topic of NAWDEX based on model simulations and theoretical studies. The involved institutions are Universities of Mainz, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Munich and the DLR. The new and unique observational NAWDEX data set will be an outstanding possibility to commonly apply the theoretical methods and diagnostics close to the reality being observed by a multitude of state-of-the art remote sensing instruments. Several projects plan to collaborate and use the observational data to perform case studies and model sensitivity tests. On an international level the partners are located in the US (NPS Monterrey, NCAR, and others), in the UK (University Reading, University Manchester), in France (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/IPSL) in Canada (Meteorological Service of Canada) and Switzerland (ETH Zürich).
Partners
- Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg
- German Aerospace Center, Institute of Atmospheric Physics (DLR-IPA)
- University Hamburg
- University of Cologne
- Leipzig University
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
- Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH)
- German Research Foundation
Scientific instruments and payload configuration
List of scientific instruments for the mission:
| Scientific instrument acronym | Description | Principal investigator | Institution |
|---|---|---|---|
| HAMP | HALO Microwave Package | Felix Ament Bjorn Stevens | Univ. Hamburg MPI-M |
| WALES | Water Vapour Differential Absorption Lidar | Andreas Fix Martin Wirth | DLR-IPA |
| HALO-SMART | Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation Measurement System | Manfred Wendisch | Leipzig Univ. |
| HALO-DS | DLR Dropsonde System | Stefan Kaufmann | DLR-IPA |
| specMACS | Hyperspectral Cloud and Sky Imaging | Bernhard Mayer | LMU |
| BAHAMAS incl. SHARC | HALO Basic Data Acquisition System incl. Humidity Measurement | Andreas Giez | DLR-FX |
Cabin and exterior configuration of HALO for the mission
HALO cabin layout for NARVAL-2/NAWDEX
HALO exterior configuration for NARVAL-2/NAWDEX
Halo flights for this mission
| Aircraft registration | Date | Take off - Landing / UT | Total flight time / h | From - To | Mission # |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-15 | 08:55:00 - 09:42:00 | 0.783 | EDMO - EDMO | 1 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-17 | 07:17:00 - 14:12:00 | 6.917 | EDMO - BIKF | 2 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-21 | 13:55:00 - 19:25:00 | 5.500 | BIKF - BIKF | 3 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-23 | 07:36:00 - 16:37:00 | 9.017 | BIKF - BIKF | 4 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-26 | 09:56:00 - 19:00:00 | 9.067 | BIKF - BIKF | 5 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-09-27 | 11:31:00 - 20:37:00 | 9.100 | BIKF - BIKF | 6 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-01 | 08:22:00 - 11:48:00 | 3.433 | BIKF - BIKF | 7 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-06 | 07:02:00 - 16:14:00 | 9.200 | BIKF - BIKF | 8 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-09 | 10:24:00 - 19:04:00 | 8.667 | BIKF - BIKF | 9 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-10 | 11:58:00 - 19:37:00 | 7.650 | BIKF - BIKF | 10 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-13 | 07:57:00 - 15:58:00 | 8.017 | BIKF - BIKF | 11 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-14 | 08:23:00 - 14:54:00 | 6.517 | BIKF - BIKF | 12 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-15 | 08:40:00 - 16:37:00 | 7.950 | BIKF - BIKF | 13 |
| D-ADLR | 2016-10-18 | 08:51:00 - 14:41:00 | 5.833 | BIKF - BIKF | 14 |
More information
Scientific background and links to more information:
Press releases, media etc
DLR news, 28-Sep-2016
In the ‚cooking pot‘ of the ‚weather kitchen‘ – research flights over the North Atlantic for better weather forecasts. Everyone knows this situation with a weather forecast, when the presenter reveals a new Icelandic low on the map. Very soon, they are then often told, the trough of low pressure will reach the mainland and determine the weather for many days in Europe. Small errors often lead to the forecast in Europe being very uncertain for several days, because the system develops vigorously in the ‚weather kitchen‘ over the Atlantic, and that is difficult to capture in weather models. Under the leadership of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), research flights are expected to provide high-resolution data to shed more light on the weather patterns in the remote North Atlantic that are so crucial for Europe.
Read more.. (in English) | Weiterlesen.. (auf deutsch)
BBC news, 29-Sep-2016
Flights probe jet stream role in floods. A major international effort is under way to research one of the greatest unknowns in weather forecasting – the influence of the jet stream. For the first time, a fleet of drones and planes is being deployed from the United States, Iceland and Britain to investigate the flow of air crossing the Atlantic.
Read more.. (in English)
ARD-Morgenmagazin, 21-Oct-2016
NAWDEX in ARD-Morgenmagazin. On October 21st 2016, the TV host and meteorologist Donald Bäcker presented the weather reports of the ARD-Morgenmagazin from the hangar at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen. He interviewed George Craig and Andreas Schäfler about the NAWDEX campaign, the scientific questions it addressed and the instrumental challenges asociated with it.
Read more.. (in English)
LMU research highlights, 3-Nov-2016
Spectral remote sensing of clouds during NARVAL-2 und NAWDEX. Between August and October 2016 the LMU cloud spectrometer specMACS was part of a comprehensive remote sensing instrumentation on the research aircraft HALO. specMACS provided spectral imagery of solar radiance between 500 and 2500 nm wavelength. A swath of several kilometres width was provided along the aircraft flight track. Based on this data spatial cloud distribution, cloud phase, and cloud particle size will be provided.
Read more.. (in English) | Weiterlesen.. (auf deutsch)