Essential to EOL's mission is to share the element of discovery during the field campaigns we support. EOL strives to provide a multifaceted program that is engaging for the next generation of scientists and engineers, and informative to the general public. A unique education and public outreach program is developed for a sub-set of our field campaigns to openly communicate the cycle of discovery that intrinsically unfolds during the planning, deployment, and analysis phases of atmospheric science research.
EOL systems support a wide-range of research areas, including:
The O2/N2 Ratio and CO2 Airborne Southern Ocean (ORCAS) Study is an NSF sponsored airborne field campaign with research flights planned from Punta Arenas, Chile during January and February of 2016.
The Southern Ocean plays a dominant role in the uptake of anthropogenic carbon yet this process is poorly represented by models and its future trajectory remains highly uncertain. ORCAS will advance our understanding of the physical and biological controls on air-sea exchange of O2 and CO2 in the Southern Ocean. This will be achieved through intensive airborne surveys of atmospheric O2, CO2, related gases, and ocean surface properties over diverse biogeochemical regions adjacent to the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula.
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A study to advance the understanding of continental, nocturnal, warm-season precipitation
PECAN was focused on nocturnal convection in conditions over the Southern Great Plains with a stable boundary layer (SBL), a nocturnal low-level jet (NLLJ) and the largest CAPE (Convectively Available Potential Energy) located above the SBL. Thunderstorms are most common after sunset across this region in summer and much of the resulting precipitation falls from mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). Nocturnal MCSs may produce heavy rainfall; their intensity is correlated with the NLLJ. To date, an accurate prediction and an in-depth understanding of elevated convection in this environment remains an elusive goal.
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A study to characterize wintertime emissions and chemical processes in the Northeastern U.S.
WINTER, which stands for Wintertime Investigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity, was an atmospheric chemistry project studying the emissions and fate of pollutants during winter across the eastern U.S. WINTER used the NSF/NCAR C-130 research aircraft, a flying laboratory, to conduct research flights in the Northeast Urban Corridor, the Ohio River Valley, and the Southeast Mid-Atlantic regions from 1 February - 15 March 2015. Flight operations were based at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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