CLIMATE MONITORING
Weathering heights
European scientists and engineers plan to monitor the Earth’s climate more efficiently by
mounting sensor technology on a fleet of modified commercial aircraft. Jon Excell reports
BY INVESTIGATING the upper reaches
of our planet’s atmosphere we can learn
much about the Earth’s climate and our
impact on it.
The problem is that the equipment for
monitoring this extreme environment —
from balloons, to satellites, to specialised
research aircraft — is often expensive,
sometimes unreliable, and simply unable
to carry out the sort of continuous
analysis that’s required for truly
accurate climate models.
The answer, according to a group of
European scientists and engineers, is to
tap into a resource that has been staring
us in the face — or, to be more accurate,
flying above our heads — for the past 50
years.
The team, an alliance of academics
and engineers from industry giants
Airbus, Lufthansa and BA is investigat-
ing the possibility of using existing
commercial aircraft to create a global
sensing network that will probe the
troposphere and stratosphere with
unprecedented regularity.
Dubbed IAGOS (Integration of routine
Aircraft measurements into a Global
Observing System) the EU-funded project
is the continuation of an earlier initiative
named MOZAIC, (Measurement of Ozone
and Water vapour by Airbus In-service
aircraft) which equipped a small fleet of
passenger aircraft with a package of
ozone, water vapour, carbon monoxide
and nitrogen oxide sensors.
The project’s leader, Dr Andreas
Volz-Thomas of Germany’s Juelich
research centre, explained that the aim of
IAGOS is to expand on this with a
slimmed down, more advanced sensor
package that will be deployed on a larger
number of aircraft.
The initial plan is to install the
payload on a fleet of 10 to 20 Airbus A340s
for which the group has a so-called
Supplemental Type Certificate (STC)
authorising it to make particular
modifications. Volz-Thomas said he
hopes soon to gain a similar certificate
for A330s which are typically flown on
shorter routes and can therefore provide
28
FutuRe
of aerospace
a more detailed vertical profile of the
atmosphere.
Weighing around 220lbs (100kg),
compared to the 180kg of the MOZAIC
payload, the sensor package will be
installed in the avionic compartment
beneath the cockpit. A340s are particu-
larly well-suited to the project as this
compartment contains a handy bit of
free space which is designed to
accommodate a rarely used optional
refrigeration system.
As for the nature of the payload, as
well as the ozone, CO and NOx instru-
ments from MOZAIC, IAGOS will
contain a number of new instruments.
One of these, a cloud particle sensor,
is currently under development by a
Manchester University team.
The device weighs around 2kg and
consists of a tiny laser, which will fire a
beam through a small window in the
avionic compartment, and a small
telescope for retrieving the backscat-
tered light. Volz-Thomas said the data
acquired by this system could lead to
big improvements in climate models.
‘You need to know the particle distribu-
tion to do the radiative transport model
to feed into climate models and to
understand cloud formation,’ he said.
The Manchester team is also
working alongside scientists at the
German Aerospace Centre (DLR) on the
development of optical particle
counters that, mounted inside the
aircraft, will be able to measure the full
range of particles in the air.
Volz-Thomas is particularly excited
about the opportunities the project will
provide for studying the tropopause;
the boundary between the troposphere
— which is where the weather happens
— and the stratosphere. The
tropopause is where jet planes fly and
is of great interest to climate scientists
because it effectively acts as an invisi-
ble barrier to rising air, and plays a
major role in cloud formation and
weather.
Volz-Thomas said that aircraft
flying through the tropopause have
distinct advantages over the satellite
and ground-based sensing techniques
that are currently used. ‘Satellites
cannot resolve the
continues 30 ➜
the EnGIneeR 30 JUNE–13 JULY 2008
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