News

6 March 2025

From next week on, the HALO aircraft will conduct research flights from Kiruna (northern Sweden) as part of the Arctic Springtime Chemistry Climate Investigations (ASCCI) mission. In preparation for NAWDIC, we will test the KITsonde system on HALO and plan to release a total of 24 dropsonde containers, each equipped with up to four meteorological measurement sondes. Members of the NAWDIC team will be on site in Kiruna for two weeks to coordinate the KITsonde operations. During a recent test flight over the German Bight, one dropsonde container was already released at a height of about 12 km and four individual sondes successfully collected meteorological data down towards the surface. On their decent, the sondes drifted up to 38 km away from their release point and spread over a distance of about 25 km. We are now looking forward to more exciting observations during ASCCI.

19 February 2025

In less than a year from now, the obervation period of NAWDIC will take place in North Atlantic- European region. The overarching goal of the campaign is to advance our understanding of dynamical and physical processes across scales in extratropical cyclones leading to high impact weather events, such as gale-force winds or heavy precipitation. The campaign incorporates three European research aircraft, which will be deployed from Ireland and France, and measurements from the ground-based mobile observation platform KITcube, which will be deployed at the Western coast of France. Many German and international research institutions contribute to the research campaign. Such a large-scale research campaign requires substantial preparation in terms of coordination of measurement strategies and flight plans. Therefore, the hybrid, so-called NAWDIC "Dry Run" took place for two weeks at the end of January 2025.

During the Dry Run, all participants mimiced realistic campaign conditions, which included setting up detailed flight plans across the North Atlantic for the respective weather conditions. Challenges in the flight mission planning arise due to several reasons. These include, for example, uncertainties in the weather forecast, air traffic restrictions, instrument limitations, as well as coordination of the three aircraft.

To practice mission planning under realistic conditions, real weather forecast data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts were employed and used for the visualisation of weather conditions along the virtual flight tracks. The figure on the right illustrates one mission option for the long-range German research aircraft HALO. In that scenario, the goal is to observe the mesoscale structure of the cold front as well as the structure of the upper-level jet stream using remote sensing instruments and the KITsonde dropsonde system.

A typical (virtual) campaign day consisted of a General Planning meeting to discuss and coordinate upcoming missions, detailed weather forecast discussions, and break-out groups for individual aircraft missions. Thanks to the great engagement of all participants, the two weeks were successful - the Dry Run resulted in lots of gained experience, a large number of different mission scenarios, and increased motivation of all participants. We are now looking forward to January 2026 and the start of the NAWDIC campaign.

27 January 2025

The NAWDIC Dry Run has started! On the first day, almost 50 scientists from Europe and North America joined the online meetings and are now looking forward to two intense weeks of monitoring the current weather situation, talking science, and planning virtual research flights over the North Atlantic.

5 November 2024

During the recent 20th Cyclone Workshop at St. Sauveur, Quebec, Canada, the communities of NAWDIC, AR Recon, the planned US mission NURTURE as well as interested participants of the workshop came together in a relaxed environment to foster the collaboration and discuss coordinated planning procedures for the upcoming dry run and the implementation phase in winter 2025/26.

17 October 2024

Between 16 and 18 September 2024, the NAWDIC coordination team received a visit from Dr. Marty Ralph (Director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, CW3E) and Dr. Luca Delle Monache (Director of Research of CW3E). The visit included a tour of the KITcube facilities, a demonstration of the KITsonde, and a special seminar presented by both to the IMKTRO. Additionally, on the final day, a meeting was held between the NAWDIC coordination team and AR Recon to plan the NAWDIC Dry Run scheduled to take place from 27 January to 7 February 2025.

2 October 2024

In preparation for the deployment of the KITsonde measurement system during NAWDIC, a one-week instrument assembling workshop took place in August 2024 at KIT. The KITsonde is a modular multi-sensor dropsonde system that allows to simultaneously launch up to four meteorological measurement sondes from a research aircraft. Shortly after being dropped from more than 10 km above ground, the sondes are released from a discharge container and drift on diverging trajectories due to differently sized parachutes. When reaching the ground, the sondes have separated by up to 70 km, depending on the prevailing wind profile. Meteorological measurements and position data are sent to the aircraft every second, which allows to capture both vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, and wind at a resolution of around 10 m and the mesoscale variability of the troposphere.

The unique and specially designed KITsonde system was developed at KIT in collaboration with enviscope GmbH and Graw Radiosondes GmbH & Co. KG and is prefabricated only in small numbers. Members of the NAWDIC team as well as highly motivated colleagues of the institute now spent a whole week assembling release containers, cutting parachutes, and packing measurement sondes. Thanks to this great collaborative effort, they have completed more than 20 release containers packed with a total of 60 sondes, which will be deployed for preparatory measurements during the ASCCI campaign in March 2025. For NAWDIC, another 110 release containers equipped with 340 sondes will be prepared for airborne deployment. The measurements taken with the KITsonde system during both campaigns will be sent in real-time to the global telecommunication system (GTS) of WMO. This will make the data available to meteorological centers worldwide and allow the data to be assimilated into their numerical weather prediction systems.

10 July 2024

From 1 to 5 July 2024, three members of the KIT NAWDIC team traveled to Brittany (northwestern France) to search for measurement locations for the KITcube observation system. The NAWDIC-KITcube component will focus on the downward momentum transport during dry intrusion events using meso- to micro-scale ground-based observations, which will be conducted near the city of Brest during an extended winter period in 2025/26. The inspection of potential measurement sites was greatly supported by colleagues of Ifremer in Plouzané and Marine Meteorology & Offshore centre of Meteo France in Guipavas.