AOC's Projects with AVAPS I and AVAPS II: Hurricane Research, SFMR Calibration, and Winter Storms 2010

2. Office of Marine and Aviation Operations AVAPS at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations CenterIan Sears Jeff Smith Alan Goldstein**Special Thanks to Jessica Williams** A quick look at AOC’s 2009 Summer projects with AVAPS I and Winter 2010 projects with AVAPS II

3. Projects involving AVAPS • SFMR calibration flights - 38 • Aircraft science systems test flights - 10 • Coyote UAS verification - 4 • Hurricane research/surveillance - 170 • Hurricane Synoptic Flow - 396 • Ocean Winds satellite verification - 89 • Winter Storms 2010 - 654 • AVAPS development/test - 73

4. NOAA Aircraft Operations Center Hurricane Wilma Surveillance

5. NOAA Aircraft Operations Center Hurricane Surveillance Hurricane Surveillance missions (Synoptic Flow missions) requires the G-IVSP to fly in data void areas away from the core of the storm, using dropsondes to map the environment for forecasting purposes. 2009 15 missions, 396 drops, 88% success rate 2008 23 missions, 172 drops, 93% success rate 2007 7 missions, 213 drops, 97% success rate 2006 7 missions, 172 drops, 95% success rate 2005 46 missions, 1280 drops, 90% success rate 2004 30 missions, 821 drops, 92% success rate 2003 13 missions, 302 drops, 90% success rate

6. Hurricane Research / Recco / Ocean Winds Summer 2009 NOAA / AOC performed only 12 P3 Hurricane Research, Reconnaissance, and Ocean Winds missions in 2009, dropping 189 sondes. 94% Successful

7. AVAPS I Notes • NOAA ordered 1000 AVAPS I sondes in 2010, as these began to be used in missions from our G-IV, the failure rates from Fast Falls went way up, averaging 20 – 25% per box of 20 • NOAA test mission to recover sondes launched from 41,000 over water found the problem… Case split by chute bungy; Delay ribbon tangled; Sensor clamshell separated; Bungy partially cut by sonde case; Partial chute failure

8. WSR 2010 • First NOAA project with the AVAPS II sondes. 654 sondes dropped / 96% Good!!! • Fast fall 10 • No launch detect 5 • PTU Failed on launch 4 • Early launch detect 3 • Other 5

9. AVAPS II Timeline • 2005 – Vaisala notifies NOAA of PTU sensor end-of-life scheduled. Parts obsolescence likely to impact production soon. • 2006 – Air Force Reserve, NCAR, and NOAA team together to develop AVAPS II dropsonde. • 1/2008 – NOAA begins acquisition process for AVAPS II dropsonde. Strong emphasis on a Fair and Open Competition; some related experience required from bidders. • 2/2008 – First drops of early prototype AVAPS II sondes • 5/2009 – Award of AVAPS II production contract to Vaisala • 11/2009 – First production lot of AVAPS II arrives at AOC; ground and flight testing complete • 1/2010- Winter Storms 2010 project begins w/AVAPS II sondes

10. Ocean Winds 2010 • AVAPS II sondes (St. John’s mission flights) • 100% success 75 dropped / 75 good • AVAPS I sondes (buoy flyover) • 93% success 14 dropped / 13 good

11. Issues and Observations Winter Storms 2010 showed some new issues arising with the dropsondes as well as how Aspen interprets these issues.  Often trial and error was used on the plane to find a way to get some good data out to the models, which took a good amount of time and at least once, we goofed.

12. Issues and Observations • Issues with launch detect algorithm found and corrected with a firmware update. First 1500 sondes delivered to NOAA are modified by NOAA prior to each mission. • Occasional reporting of sonde serial number 000000000 • Flight Level Data line initially did not report the associated sonde serial number and the data tag is “A11” instead of the AVAPS I “A00” • Erroneous PTU data aka “PTU Jump”– blocks not flagged as bad, and not always caught by ASPEN filters

13. Issues and Observations • GPS wind anomaly – garbled wind data ingested by ASPEN • Erroneous pressure on launch • No method to verify if Launch Detect system is properly initialized during the normal sonde initialization process • Early launch detects occur if the light path between the launch detect sensor and detector momentarily opens when the sonde “drops” into the launch chute.

14. Sonde Serial Number

15. A00 or A11

16. PTU data anomalies Approximately 10% of drops had at least one occurrence

17. Wind Anomaly Wind speed and wind direction Vs. pressure

18. Wind Anomaly

19. Wind Anomalies – Aspen QC • QC trying to interpolate or average wind speed and dir around line of bad data?

20. Wind Anomalies – Aspen Levels • Wind Anomalies incorporated into Levels tab and WMO

21. Wind Anomalies Fix – Edit D-File • Removing just the line with bad Lat/Lon in the D file will remove entire group of wind anomalies in Aspen • Top D-file has bad line highlighted • Bottom D-file has bad line removed

22. Wind Anomalies Fix - Aspen • Removing only lines in D-File with bad Lat/Lon will fix several bad lines in Aspen QC • Aspen QC has no wind anomalies • XY Graph shows no wind anomalies

23. Erroneous pressure on launch

24. Launch Detect • LED light in parachute chamber • Light sensor on opposite side of chamber • Parachute blocks the light • Sonde is looking for a sharp increase in light • Sometimes, the parachute doesn’t block enough light to allow a sharp increase in light detected • No launch detect

25. Early Launch Detect – Aspen XY Graphs Raw XY Graph QC XY Graph – stops at 810mb

26. Early Launch Detect Example D-File Launch Detect LAU at 002304Z Pressure @ 02304Z still ~ 810mb - Sonde not launched yet

27. Early Launch Detect Example D-File Actual time of sonde deployment ~ 002600Z Note Pressure Change Geopotential Altitudes 1,500 Meters too high – Likely due to early Launch detect Time sonde fall rate stabilizes ~002607Z

28. Early Launch Detect Fix – Edit D-File -In Text editor replace time in LAU and A00 line with Actual Launch time from FD log or D file Replace Lat, Lon, G Alt, and any other parameters that are off on original A00 line with Parameters at time of actual launch – from D file or FD Log Original D-File

29. Early Launch Detect – Aspen Levels • No RH Values • Bad Wind Data • Altitudes too high • This data gets input into WMO msg

30. Last Reported GPS height

31. Last Reported GPS height

32. Special Thanks to: LT Jackie Almeida Rich Henning Barry Damiano Jess Williams Jack Parrish