7 September 1995
PH: The flight started off with a good vertical profile over two sunphotometers to the east of Porto Velho. One at Repressa Samuel, 8.8[[ring]] S 63.5[[ring]] W, and the other at Jamari, 9.2[[ring]] S 63.2[[ring]] W. We sampled at about 14,000 ft to 12,500, 9,600, 8,600, 6,600, 5,000, 2,500, and 1,000 ft MSL. The last level being about 600 AGL. During those samplings, we also sought clouds at different levels and went through quite a few clouds including some cumulus and some altocumulus and some lower level cumulus fractus. The ER-2 was flying over us during that time. It should have passed over Repressa Samuel at 12:40 LT and Jamari at 12:50 LT, which included the period of our vertical profile. We then headed to the reservoir near Repressa Samuel and got CAR measurements, four banked turns to the right and two looking at the sky over the reservoir, which turned out to be not just water but islands with burnt trees and marshy areas and trees sticking out of the reservoir. Then, finally, right at the end of the flight, the last few minutes, we went through two fair sized plumes, almost one after the other, and got one bag sample, I guess, on those two plumes for detailed chemical analysis. And that's about it. So pretty good flight, did a number of things, and obtained, I think, a lot of good data.
PH: Art, summarize.
AR: This was our most disturbed case weather-wise. Cumulus began forming about 10:30 LT in the morning. That's the earliest we've seen those clouds begin to take off. And by the time we were flying, we had a few towering cumulus goose necks here and there and they rapidly proliferated. There seemed to be no cap on top of this stuff. Very much like a typical day in Florida with scattered cumulonimbus clouds. Tops well over 30,000 ft during the last hour of the flight. And general cloud cover gradually filling in and debris clouds from the cumulonimbus clouds and the mid-level clouds that were already present. So, as far as the sun photometer goes, except for the suppressed area over the reservoir, which remained intact during the whole flight pretty much, the cloud cover ranged from about 50% at the northwest end of the track to about 10% in the vicinity of the reservoir, more or less, and back up again around the vicinity of the southeast turn point.
PH: Art, you are fading, speak up.
AR: And the top of the haze layer was up around 14,200 ft with maybe another 1% above that. Probably would have finished it off at maybe about 500 ft. And there was little structure indicated. Some slight indication of stratification in the 8,000-14,000 ft levels but nothing to speak of. Cloud bases rose from 3,000 ft at the beginning of the flight to about 4,000 ft by the end of the flight.
PH: Okay. Ray.
RW: Let's see. It was pretty routine from my point of view up until the plumes. I did 56 "no-bags", some interstitial samples. The two plumes we went through at the end I got good OEC data on them. The plumes seemed very white, which is characteristic of the surrounding air. It would have been nice to have gotten the black one, but I guess we will go back. That's about it.
PH: Ron, summary.
RF: That last bag sample was really good. Sorry, I cut you off while you were talking, but I could see it right out my window. And the way it was laying down I thought with one pass if we got Ken into it right away we could get a good can sample without having to do it twice. So that worked out real well. We got a real good hot and cold DMPS on that and that worked fine. I think the profile went fine too. We did three good loads of filters at top, middle and low levels at that column.
PH: Jason?
JL: Yes, I'm here. Okay. The highlight of this flight as far as CAR is concerned is the BRDF over the dam or the reservoir. I recorded lat-long minus 8.9 minus 63.3 and what we see is the black water plus dead tree plus island. So three kinds of things the CAR saw and the estimated cloud cover is about 30%. So that's it.
PH: Jack.
JR: Everything worked okay except for the 2-D a seal broke. Well, I'll have to take a look at it.
PH: Don, summarize.
DS: Well, we got a lot of good DMPS measurements showing differences between hot and cold. Looked very similar from about the highest altitude.
DS: 2-D went down too just prior to where we got into the warmer boundary layer between the hot and cold. You could lay them on top of each other. Did a couple on the smoke on the DMPS and it did show some volatization. CCN worked quite good. The smoke plumes I did have some filters in and we'll see what we get.