| MTP Home Page | ACCENT MTP Home Page |

ACCENT CTC Page

Last Update: June 11, 2003

This page provides a calendar of color-coded temperature curtains (CTCs) for the ACCENT WB-57F flights. Click on the thumbnail images in the calendar frames below to examine an enlarged (800x600) PNG image of the thumbnail; click the flight number to see a plot of the flight track. The enlarged PNG images range in size from 30-50 kB. Although CTCs for an entire flight are very useful for understanding what happening on a synoptic scale, they do not use the MTP data at full resolution, and therefore do not adequately illustrate the mesoscale structure of the atmosphere. For comparison of MTP measurements to in situ and remote tracer measurements, full resolution MTP data should be used. This is available from the archive in the MP files.

The CTC plots presented here are based on data submitted to the archive on Jan 13, 2001. The CTC plots all have the same temperature
range (180 K - 240 K). The flight altitude is indicated by the upper solid black trace, and the tropopause altitude, by the white trace. The black trace near the bottom of the plot is a metric which indicates the quality of the retrieval and ranges from 0 (excellent) to 2 (poor) on the left hand (km) pressure altitude scale (it uses the lowest two tic intervals). In the COMMENTS field I have provided an assessment of the quality of the retrieval. The two staircase flights (4/22 and 9/17) are particularly bad. This was also the case for an ER-2 staircase flight during SOLVE (Feb 3, 2000), and it had to do with the fact that the Nav outside air temperature calibration was pressure altitude dependent. That is probably the case here also, but I haven't attempted to correct it yet.

These images are presented here only as an aid for other scientists to understand their ACCENT data. It may not be used for any other purpose, or referred to, without written permission from MJ Mahoney of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, go here.

Local Links to [Spring Deployment] [Fall Deployment]

Spring Deployment

All of the spring ACCENT test flightswere heavily compromised by either radio frequency interference (RFI) or intermediate frequency interference (IFI). This data has been pain-stakenly edited to remove the interference, which explains the missing data in the curtain plots presented below. Removing the bad data has compromised the retrievals somewhat because the instrument gain could not be modelled as well.

CTC Thumbnail	Date	Comments
	19990325	Test Flight, no NAV data Therefore, no MTP pointing corrections
	19990326	Local Test Flight Bad RFI or IFI
	19990407	Test Flight, No NAV data Therefore, no MTP pointing corrections
	19990409	Flight to the Cape and back to Houston Bad RFI or IFI Mediocre retrieval
	19990412	Flight to Cape for plume intercept. Land at Cape. Bad RFI or IFI Mediocre retrieval
	19990413	Return flight from Cape to Ellington Field. Bad RFI or IFI Mediocre retrieval
	19990415	Transit to Vandenburg AFB for plume intercept. Land at Edwards AFB Bad RFI or IFI Reasonable retrieval
	19990416	Return to Ellington Field from Edwards AFB Bad RFI or IFI Good retrieval
	19990422	Flight Brownsville and back There is something badly wrong with this retrieval (as the quality metric shows)
	19990423	Flight to SE over water Good retrieval to 55.8 ks, bad afterwards

Fall Deployment

CTC Thumbnail	Date	Comments
	19990903	1st Fall TF - MTP Cal over RAOB sites Good retrieval
	19990908	2nd Fall TF - Fuel flow cal / MTP cal Good retrieval
	19990913	3rd Fall TF - Hi flight over to Hurricane Floyd Good retrieval
	19990915	Science flight to Hurricane Floyd at landfall Mediocre retrieval
	19990917	Cross-track staircase near Dallas-Fort Worth Poor retrieval
	19990920	Tropical flight with layover in Costa Rica Revised 2003.06.11 No pitch and roll data to correct MTP Pointing Avg pitch of 19990921 flight was 0.11 +/- 0.25, so pitch error should not have a big impact on the retrievals Retrievals are of much higher quality than original submissions
	19990921	Return flight from Costa Rica Revised 2003.06.11 Retrievals are of much higher quality than original submissions
	19990922	Local lower stratosphere test flight for ACE and CORE Mediocre retrieval
	19990924	Transit flight for plume intercept at Vandenburg AFB Land at Edwards AFB, MTP removed from airplane Good retrieval