Special aircraft for atmospheric research
- .
“The specially developed measurement instruments and devices plus the enormous performance capacity of the research aircraft HALO make it unique in the world,” says Dr. Helmut Ziereis, who coordinates the work on HALO at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). HALO stands for “High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft”. With an altitudeof more than 15 kilometres and a range of over 20,000 kilometres, HALO can carry out measurements in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, even in extremely remote regions. These regions could previously only be reached selectively by means of measuring probes.
Over many years, DLR experts at the site in Oberpfaffenhofen prepared the first missions, in close cooperation with partners from the Helmholtz Research Centres in Karlsruhe, Jülich and Potsdam, Max Planck Institutes, universities and the Leibniz Association. The atmospheric researchers want to record and analyse the chemical reactions, transport processes and cloud formation in the troposphere. These not only influence global air pollution and ozone degeneration, but are also entered into the climate simulation models.
Using HALO they now want to study the large-area convection currents that determine regional weather events and are strongly influenced by climate change. The impact of aircraft flying in high altitudes has hardly been studied at all yet, for example, the question of whether and how the vapour trails in the upper troposphere increase the formation of ice clouds. “However, before HALO can take off for science, complex external devices which carry important measurement instruments have to be installed on the plane, tested in flight and then approved,”says Ziereis. These tests will take place from autumn 2009, so that HALO can fly for research as from 2010.
