Lead Project Scientist | Eric Uhlhorn |
AXBT Scientist | Ben Jaimes de la Cruz (UMiami) |
Pilots | Carl Newman
Mark Nelson |
Flight Director | Jack Parrish |
Navigator | Tom Gallagher |
Flt. Eng. | Dewie Floyd |
Data Tech | Jeff Smith Terry Lynch |
Elec. Tech | Damon San Souci |
Figure 1. Flight track with AXBT drop locations,
and altitmeter-derived heat content distribution. Red asterisks are failed
probes. The actual track of Gustav is shown tracking directly over the
pre-storm ocean experimental domain.
Mission Plan :
N43RF will fly a post-storm mission over the wake of Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf of Mexico. It will leave MacDill AFB, FL at 14:00 UTC, and recover at MacDill AFB, FL by 22:00.
Mission Summary :
Take off | Landing
MacDill AFB, FL | 13:59 UTC
| MacDill AFB, FL | 20:53 UTC
| |
The flight track was designed to sample the ocean wake of Gstav from the Loop Current to 28°N. This track was generally over the same area sampled prior to Gustav on 28 August. The flight was at 8000' unpressurized for free-fall AXBT launches. The sampling strategy called for dropping ASBTs over 0.5° longitude over the Loop Current and north Gulf of Mexico, and every 0.25° along east-to-west legs at the northern boundary of the Loop Current. A total of 68 AXBTs were dropped, of which 53 returned good profiles. The vast majority of bad launches were from channel 14 (Spartan) probes. Additionally, a few channel 16 (Sippican) probes failed, likely due to reciever problems. Only one channel 12 (Sippican) probe failed to return a clean temperature profile. In summary, storm-induced cooling relative to pre-storm conditions was found to be < 1°C in the Loop Current, increasing to around 3°C at the northern part of the experimental domain.
Problems :
No major problems, other than those associated with bad probes discussed above.
Erich Uhlhorn
09/26/2008
Mission Data :
1 second data file | NetCDF data file
Flight Data | ||
Flight track |
Temperature and Moisture |
Wind and Atlitude |