ARL News

Aircraft eddy flux collaboration with the University of Alabama

 

January 21, 2005

ARL scientists have been instrumental in developing modern methods for measuring the rate of exchange of trace gases and particles between the air and the underlying landscape. The mobile flux platforms developed by ARL and flown experimentally on the Long EZ aircraft by the late Dr. Tim Crawford have now been improved to the point where they have been added to the NOAA P-3 aircraft and are now being offered as sensing systems on the Sky Arrow light research aircraft constructed by Iniziative Industriali Italiane (in Rome, Italy).

The University of Alabama has purchased one of the new Sky Arrow aircraft, and is currently entering into a formal arrangement with ARL to use the new platform to investigate the spatial variability of evaporation and carbon dioxide sequestration rates. The array of surface stations operated by ARL will be used as benchmarks.