ARCTAS: Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites  ( Spring & Summer 2008 )

Introduction

The Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) mission will take place during the Spring and Summer of 2008. The urgent need for research to better understand changes in arctic atmospheric composition and climate has been discussed by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and the U. S. Global Change Research Program. The NASA ARCTAS mission will unleash the potential of NASA space-based observations for Arctic research by providing retrieval algorithm validation and correlative information uniquely accessible from aircraft platforms.

ARCTAS is an integrated satellite/aircraft mission where the focus of the aircraft is to add value to the satellite observations for facilitating their exploitation by atmospheric Earth science models. Satellite and model science teams are involved in all stages of pre-mission flight planning, flight execution, and post-mission data interpretation. ARCTAS is part of a larger interagency and international International Polar Year (IPY) effort collectively identified as " POLARCAT ".

Several organizations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC) are supporting the Spring and Summer 2008 ARCTAS mission with real-time analysis, forecasts, and visualizations based on the GMAO-developed Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5). This forecasting support activity is a team effort of the GMAO, the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch, the Software Integration and Visualization Office (SIVO), and the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS).

Note that the predictions developed for ARCTAS are experimental and are produced for research purposes only. Use of these forecasts for other purposes is not recommended.

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