DIARY - October 8, 2012

Today Marc, Franzi, Harald and Philipp joined the planning team. In the general briefing we discussed options for flights for Thursday to Saturday. Yesterday's 12 UTC run showed two WCBs. One in the Mediterranean and one over the British Isles which appear on Thursday and Friday. We decided to focus on the Mediterranean case which showed a reachable transport from an inflow over the eastern Mediterranean towards and over the Alps. This case is not the golden day, however, it would be a good case to test the instruments and forecast tools.

As large uncertainty was evident in the EPS, we decided to wait for the 00 UTC forecast: Unfortunately, the forecast changed and the Med WCB was weaker and showed a transport further south and more eastward. In this case the outflow would be difficult to reach. As the ensemble forecasts show a large uncertainty with respect to the WCB structure, we plan for a flight in the inflow region over the western Mediterranean on Thursday evening and a successive flight observing the same ascending WCB air mass over the Alps. For a detailed evaluation please have a look at the weather summary .

The test flight was performed as scheduled. The Falcon took off at 14 LT and after a flight in the military training area near the airport, the aircraft returned to Oberpfaffenhofen. During the flight the Falcon was able to probe in low-level clouds at ~5000 ft and also some high level cirrus clouds. The instruments worked predominately well. Some problems with the CR-2 and CO instruments can be addressed during the next 2 days without flights. After the landing a problem with the brakes was found which requires a replacement tomorrow morning.

Some pictures of today: