MCS Outflow flight template

The template is related with the I3.1 item of the AMMA-TT8 document and is planned for one flight.

The idea underlying this template is to sample TTL air that is likely to have been processed by an MCS system in the previous 1-2 days; it is preferable but not mandatory that the MCS had been sampled before this flight, by a dedicated mission, or by balloon flights from Niamey. It is indeed essential to program this flight with a good forward trajectory model.

The forward trajectory model will start the air trajectory from the region of the atmosphere where an MCS has occurred in the day 0-2, and follow their evolution up to day 0, when the proposed flight is taking place.

The grey area in the figure above indicate a region of previous MCS occurrence. The ellipse shows the regions where air processed by the MCS 1-2 days earlier, is at the moment of the flight. The M55 flight (red line) will take place in that region.

The M55, F-F20 and D-F20 will fly in the region where the forward trajectories, starting from the MCS at day 0-2,   ended at day 0. The falcons will probe the altitude range up to 12-13 km, the M55 from that level upward to 17 km, with stacked flight profiles.

If interesting features were detected during a previous flight sampling the MCS from where the forward trajectory are originating, the M55 top altitude may be higher.

Time-height template for the MCS OUTFLOW flight profile.