Airborne Aerosol Wind Profiler (AWP) Measurements

This is a visualization of Aerosol Wind Profiler (AWP) data aboard the NASA Gulfstream-III for a flight on 15 October 2024 that originated from NASA/Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, Virginia. The flight took off eastward over the Atlantic and released several dropsondes for AWP validation within a strong jet stream as the flight progressed northeastward to the Massachusetts coast. The flight then headed westward to sample an upper-tropospheric trough over the Great Lakes region that featured weaker wind speeds and variations in wind direction. Cool air from Canada was responsible for creating many low cumulus clouds that often obscured the AWP lidar beam from reaching the land surface. The aircraft was flying deep into the stratosphere over this east-west flight segment, where significant aerosol backscatter was found between the tropopause near 8 km and flight altitude near 12 km. The flight then headed southeastward from near Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the Nashville, Tennessee area to sample the western portion of the trough. The flight re-entered the same strong jet stream previously sampled over the Atlantic while in Kentucky. The flight then descended over the Appalachians and AWP was turned off in western Virginia in preparation for landing at NASA Langley. Three 'walls' of data are shown including: wind speed, wind direction, and aerosol & cloud backscatter. The walls are shown 'stacked' on top of each other so you can distinguish them, but they all share the same locations as the bottom wall.