Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere Reports

DCOTSS-Reports features important reports and documentation that support the Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere sub-orbital campaign. Featured in this product are mission scientist reports, forecasting and flight planning briefings, and pilot reports. A flight report is required to be submitted for all SMD aircraft flights. Mission scientists submit two types of reports: daily reports and science flight summary reports. Daily reports provide high-level summaries of daily weather conditions and forecasts and the flight tasking decisions and options for the ER-2 for the current and next several days. The science flight summary reports are produced after each flight and provides a summary of instrument operating status, the forecasting and planning sequence leading into the mission, and a description of significant events that occurred including problems related to the aircraft or instruments, weather conditions during flight and key observations related to the mission science objectives. Data collection for this product is ongoing and currently only features the first deployment.

Each summer the North American Monsoon Anticyclone (NAMA) dominates the circulation of the North-Western Hemisphere and acts to partially confine and isolate air from the surrounding atmosphere. Strong convective storms in the NAMA regularly reach altitudes deep into the lower stratosphere, with some ascending above 20 km. These storms carry water and pollutants from the troposphere into the otherwise very dry stratosphere, where they can have a significant impact on radiative and chemical processes, potentially including destruction of stratospheric ozone. The Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere (DCOTSS) field campaign is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital research project aimed at investigating these thunderstorms. DCOTSS utilizes NASA’s ER-2 aircraft and conducted two ~8-week science deployments based out of Salina, KS spanning early to late summer.