SI - North Beaufort Loop
OIB - P-3 Orion 03/17/14 Science Report
sitrep text
NASA Operation IceBridge completed the "North Beaufort Loop (with Barrow)" mission today. Just as with Friday's mission as we approached the SIZRS sea ice survey site north of Barrow, the weather degraded with low clouds developing over the ice surface. As overflying the SIZRS survey site is intended to calibrate the CReSIS snow radar system (which is not affected by clouds) onboard the P3 aircraft, we began flying overpasses above the cloud deck. During the third pass, the ATM lidar systems began ranging to the ice surface thru rapidly thinning clouds. Passes 5 and 6 continued to show improvement, so a 7th pass was flown to take advantage of the improving weather and position the P3 for the offshore flight lines. All 7 passes were accurately located over the SIZRS survey line, and the digital camera systems (both DMS and ATM) acquired images of the SIZRS survey markers during the last three passes. Following the SIZRS passes, the P3 transited west and offshore for the remainder of the loop. Persistent low clouds were encountered offshore requiring the P3 to fly at 1000' above the ice surface until about 76 degrees north, where we "broke out" into sun and blue skies. The IceBridge sea ice remote sensing instruments collected good data in the blue sky conditions until about an hour from the coast on the southbound leg, and we managed to collect data until about 10 minutes from the shoreline in cloudier conditions, followed by a climb to transit altitude back to Fairbanks.