REPORT ON MOPITT-A ACTVITIES FOR SAFARI 2000

May 2001

The MOPITT-A instrument flew on the ER-2 mission during the SAFARI 2000 campaign and collected data for many of the flights. Generally it was a successful campaign, with the collection of much data over many flights.

Since MOPITT-A is a new instrument there were a number of issues with the instrument to deal with which arose both in the field after the flights and these are taking time and a great deal of effort to work out. The major field issue to solve was the temperature of the instrument in the pod, but this was solved by the use of the pod heaters and after that the temperatures were satisfactory. However it turned out that this was obscuring some other issues, some of which were realised at the time and some of which only came to light later. Some of the issues that were encountered were a lack of replenishment gas, software problems, and filling pressures, principally that the gas fills were far from ideal for the conditions encountered.

It has taken the Toronto team a considerable time to archive the data properly so that it can be accessed properly and to ensure that we can properly collate the information with the other events which were occurring at the same time.

The major part of the analysis is being done by Loic Jounot for his Ph.D. thesis and this is proceeding. We are currently producing Level 1 (radiances) data from the flights which look satisfactory and are considering the correct methodology for moving to Level 2 data (CO & CH4 amounts) in the light of the problems which were encountered in the field, particularly the issue of the filling pressures. We hope that it will be possible to produce some initial Level 2 product soon.

Our current plan is to look for some "golden flights" where everything went right and concentrate on the analysis of those data for the initial time period. Hopefully this should be completed during the summer as we have solved many of the problems with the data and are now proceeding with the Level 2 analysis at a faster rate.

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Prof. James R. Drummond Phone: (416)-978-4723

Department of Physics, Room 616, Pager: (416)-812-7509

University of Toronto, Fax: (416)-978-8905

60 St. George Street, e-mail: jim@atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca

Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, e-mail: james.drummond@utoronto.ca

M5S 1A7 http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca

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