Notes from the Field

Departing for Cooler Climates

August 2nd, 2016 by Róisín Commane
Steve Wofsy (ATom PI), Bruce Daube and Róisín Commane with the DC-8 in a nice and cool hanger in Palmdale, CA. Credit:

Steve Wofsy (ATom PI), Bruce Daube and Róisín Commane with the DC-8 in a nice and cool hanger in Palmdale, CA.

I’m Róisín Commane, a researcher at Harvard University working with Steve Wofsy (ATom PI) and Bruce Daube (chief engineer) to measure CO2, CH4, N2O and CO concentrations during ATom. As the project evolves, I’m hoping to provide some insight into both the science we are doing and what it means to work on an aircraft mission as unusual as ATom. Moving to a new place every few days will be tiring but I do love an adventure! I will be updating @ATom_Harvard on Twitter regularly with interesting insights, photos and videos if you want to follow along in real time.

We have been based in Palmdale, California as we prepare for the start of ATom. Palmdale is technically in Los Angeles county but is located just north of the San Gabriel mountains, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. It’s at an altitude of 800 m (~2000 ft) and is a high desert zone so summers are brutally hot and dry and winter temperatures hover around freezing.

I find there is something enchanting about the rich morning light of the desert. But then the heat arrives and I have to retreat to places much cooler. The heat in Palmdale is tough for me to deal with. While the desert dryness should be easier to deal with than the humidity of Boston (my US home town) on a bad day, temperatures up to 40oC (110F) are just brutal for anyone. So I hide inside in the middle of the day and wear SPF 60 when I venture out for brief periods. The hanger is so large that it stays a lot cooler than outside but it does mean that we have had to start pretty early for all our flights here or many of our instruments will overheat before take off (as happened on Test flight #1). Thankfully, the temperatures cool rapidly as we fly at high altitudes and on the equator flight, I was absolutely frozen!

The schedule for our flight to Anchorage, Alaska, is slightly eye-watering for me as I’m somewhat of a night owl normally. We will be collected at our hotel at 4:00 am with all our bags packed by the wonderful Jim Elkins from NOAA who offered to do a second run to the hanger just for us. I already dropped back the rental car so we’re a little short on transport options. The aircraft will be opened up to the science crew at 4:30 am so we can start to prepare our instruments. At 6:00 am we will have a crew briefing and at 7am the aircraft doors will close. Then at 7:30am we will take off for northern (and hopefully colder!) lands.

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One Response to “Departing for Cooler Climates”

  1. Bill Osterholt says:

    Sounds fascinating despite the temperature extremes.
    Bring us back some great science and enjoy the challenge!!
    Safe trip prayers from my end!
    Truly,
    Bill Osterholt