The Ron Brown is in town!

As I may have mentioned before, this project that I am part of, involves many people, and many research platforms. From the aircraft point of view there is the C-130 that I am on, then there is a Gulfstream-159 (G-1), a Twin Otter (DHC-6), the British Aerospace BAe-146-301, and the Dornier-228:

The NSF/NCAR C-130 - I showed you this before.

The Twin Otter (owner: Naval Postgraduate School / Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely-Piloted Aircraft Studies (CIRPAS) USA)

The G-1 (owner: Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, OH)

The Dornier (owner: UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC))


The BAE-146 (owner: FACILITY for AIRBORNE ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENTS (FAAM) U.K.)

Then there is a land site, located at the at the Universidad Arturo Pratta, in a town a little further South of here called Iquique. From there, several times of day, Research Radiosondes are launched (GPS Advance Upper-Air Sounding system (GAUS)). A balloon-borne rawinsonde system that measures wind, pressure, temperature and humidity:

Then there also are two research ships involved: the R/V José Olaya Balandra, and the R/V Ron H Brown:

The Olaya (Instituto del Mar del Perú (IMARPE). Ministerio de la Producción, Perú)

The Ron Brown (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration; U.S. Department of Commerce, USA), actually came to port yesterday! The crew and scientists have been on board since the end of September, and apart from a break somewhere in Central America, they were very happy to be spending 7 days on land here the next couple of days! It was fun to see some fresh and excited faces. One of the girls on the ship is a fellow graduate student whom I had met at a Climate Conference in Seattle over two years ago - it was very fun to catch up again!

After its break, the Ron Brown and crew will go back out at sea for about 4 weeks, taking more marine and atmospheric samples. One of our flight missions is actually to "meet up" with the Ron Brown every now and then: we fly over them at an altitude of 100 ft. (not very much!!), and will therefore be able to do some instrument comparisons (they measure some of the same variables as we do aboard the C-130).

And the first sighting of the Ron Brown in Arica!

In the harbor.