The Start of DISCOVER-AQ Colorado 2014

The NASA DISCOVER-AQ campaign deployment in Colorado is now underway with the setup of ground sites near Denver last week and the recent arrival of the planes.  Gator Team members from MD and PSU are hard at work setting up their site at Platteville, CO., located just fifteen (15) miles southwest of Greeley and thirty-seven (37) miles northeast of downtown Denver.  The PSU NATIVE trailer (Photo below by Ryan Stauffer) has a suite of instruments measuring trace gases at the surface and ozonesondes provide ozone and relative humidity profiles vertically in the atmosphere.

   

In preparation for the first flight of the campaign, researchers back in MD are viewing Near Real Time (NRT) observations from the NASA AIRS instrument (on the Aqua satellite) to provide context for pollution transport across the study region.  The example image below (courtesy of Debra Kollonige) shows carbon monoxide in the mid-troposphere for the US. as measured by AIRS, which is commonly used to trace pollution back to its source.  

Stay tuned for more updates throughout the campaign.  For more information about the goals of DISCOVER-AQ, visit http://discover-aq.larc.nasa.gov/. Follow all of our Gator Team South and PSU Gator Team activities on Twitter.