Aloft, Set, Go!

Aloft, Set, Go!

OTREC mission 1 (RF01)

The NCAR G-V cruising the East Pacific Ocean 43,000 ft a.m.s.l.

         OTREC flight missions have officially begun. The rumors are true, and the data we gathered confirm it; RF01 (fancy acronym for mission 1) was a success! Even a few hours before taking off, GOES satellite imagery already anticipated a thrilling mission, with cloud tops reaching well-above 40,000 ft above mean sea-level (a.m.s.l.) near the active regions of the ITCZ (Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone), right where our experimental cross-sections (sequence B2) were traced.

       Personally, I admit I am a heavy-sleeper. In most cases, not even an earthquake is able to wake me up if it happens in the middle of the night. Very few things are able to make me "rise-and-shine" at 3 am.  Among very few, I'll mention a soccer World Cup final match, following the track of Hurricane Katrina (2005), and my first flight as part of the OTREC crew this past August 8, 2019. The NCAR G-V took off around 6:30 am local time (12:30 UTC).  You know what they say: the early bird always gets the best view above the clouds. No? Well, for this "bird", the image below proves my point:

A view of Costa Rica's East Pacific Coast as the G-V climbed in altitude after taking off from the Liberia International Airport

How high did we go? The GV reached 43,000 ft, but the overall level of excitement of our team had no upper limit. Just look at the level of excitement of three of the members of the New Mexico Tech science team in the picture below, before we took off!  

From left to right: Dr. Stipo Sentic, Dr. Ana Juracic, and Dr. Zeljka Fuchs

And we took off, quickly climbing to the desired altitude. You've gotten this far to the end of the page. You want to see more images. Here they are:

 After a short episode of mild turbulence and zero visibility, we finally were above the clouds!

 The GV around the time the first dropsonde was launched (13:27 UTC)

 Sun glint made it significantly challenging to capture detailed cloud features in most cases

 Bubbling convection

 Quite a breathtaking view. It looks like we're in space!

 Looking down, some of these clouds were bubbling with convection.

 The south part of box pattern B2 had mostly low clouds. Turbulence, however, was present.

 Cloud tops well-above 43,000 ft

 Small developing convective system.

 A similar storm system, but already developed.

 We were still at 43,000 ft when this photo was taken. Really high cloud tops, possibly on a mature stage of convective activity.

 Cloud tops easily reached our cruising altitude at many stages of the flight. Result: zero visibility.

 Yes, the above photo shows a ship! However, if you take a closer look, you can see white caps at the surface of the ocean. Trust me, photographing white caps at 43,000 ft is not easy!

Going back home after a successful flight!

The photographer in action. Donations are always welcome (a joke!).

Photos and blog post by: José Martínez-Claros