The Mission Support System (MSS v7.0.4) and its use in planning for the SouthTRAC aircraft campaign

Abstract

Abstract. The Mission Support System (MSS) is an open source software package that has been used for planning flight tracks of scientific aircraft in multiple measurement campaigns during the last decade. It consists of three major components: a web map server located close to the model data storage site that is capable of producing a variety of 2-D figures from 4-D meteorological data; a client application capable of displaying the figures in combination with the planned flight track and an assortment of additional information; and a new collaboration server component that enables real-time collaboration of multiple remote parties. During the last decade, these components were constantly improved towards being simple to set up and use and being standard compliant. Here, we describe the use of MSS during the Southern Hemisphere Transport, Dynamics, and Chemistry–Gravity Waves (SouthTRAC-GW) measurement campaign in 2019. This campaign, based in Rio Grande, Argentina, used the German research aircraft HALO to investigate several scientific objectives related to the Southern Hemisphere chemistry and dynamics. We present the diverse data products offered by the MSS web map server dedicated to the campaign, which were derived from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) forecast data, Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS) simulations, and Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) near-real time brightness temperature measurements. As an example for how the MSS software is used in conjunction with the different data sets, we describe the planning of a single flight, which eventually took place on 12 September 2019, probing orographic gravity waves propagating up into the lower mesosphere.

Observations of Gravity Wave Refraction and Its Causes and Consequences

“…(2021) and for flight planning refer to Bauer et al. (2022). The flight discussed here was the first local science flight of the campaign and provided some of the last high propagating GWs of the 2019 winter season (see Section 3.1 for reasons).…”

Overview: Quasi-Lagrangian observations of Arctic air mass transformations – Introduction and initial results of the HALO–(AC)3 aircraft campaign

“…The vertical geometric thickness of the individual air mass parcels is assumed as 5 hPa, which also corresponds to the Flight planning to realize quasi-Lagrangian observations required substantial efforts for the mission coordination. To combine flight tracks with the projected trajectories, the Mission Support Tool was used (Bauer et al, 2022).…”

Horizontal Wavenumber Spectra Across the Middle Atmosphere From Airborne Lidar Observations During the 2019 Southern Hemispheric SSW

“…From 8 September 2019 a mostly zonal flow or propagating troughs dominated the tropospheric flow. Because the flights were planned to be temporally aligned with a zonal upstream flow in the troposphere (Bauer et al., 2022), all flight days have in common that there were good excitation conditions of GWs at the Southern Andes and/or Antarctic Peninsula.…”