Joel abandons us & June 16th Overpass

Two sites were established on the east track, with Ihab/Ahmad at the northern site and Alex/Cynthia/Harish the Second at the southern site. Both sites had Cimels running in Oneill mode and BCLSKY.

It was a long 5 hour drive to the southern site. Upon reaching our destination, we found the spot to be unusable due to trees and houses. We proceeded to the back-up location up north on NH-91, we arrived 30 minutes later — only to find heavy downpour for the following hour, which finally cleared around 12:45PM IST. Instrument was set up around 1PM and took mostly BCLSKY measurements as the clouds had nearly 100% coverage throughout the hour until 2PM. Another 6 hours and we’re finally back at the apartment. Tired, and ready for 6 days of… R&R?

Joel is currently on his way to the Delhi airport, where he will await his delayed flight and wonder what to do with his extra thousands of rupeeeeeees.

June 14th Overpass

Two sites were established on the west track, with Ihab/Ahmad/Cynthia at the northern site and Joel/Harish the Second at the southern site.  Both sites had Cimels running in Oneill mode.

Conditions turned quickly from mostly sunny at set-up to overcast and the instruments were both operated in Cloud mode during the overpass time.   At the northern site, rain began well before overpass (though not during overpass when it was in Cloud mode) but held off until after the overpass hour at the southern site.

Two sites will be deployed along the East track for June 16th.

Spatial Variability Study IV Completed

Spatial Variability study was carried out at the standard sites around Kanpur.  The two Cimels capable of O’neill mode (3 minute measurements) were deployed along with four Microtops.  Not much to get excited about–mostly cloudy conditions at the Cimel sites with generally more than 50% coverage.  Most if not all AOD measurements (at the East site at least) would have at best thin (uniform, structureless) cirrus contamination.   Both Aqua and Terra overpasses were cloudy here.

Brent is back in Varanasi after fixing the Ghandi College Cimel.

Google Earth misidentifies Lucknow road which can lead to significant confusion for measurements east of Kanpur.   Lucknow Road is actually about 5km SE of where it is shown.   A good point to emphasize for the northern site on the next Center overpass.

Spatial Variability Study on Track for June 11

We had a brief meeting today to prepare for the aerosol spatial variability study tomorrow.  The students retained the Microtops from the Center overpass and all of them know where to deploy tomorrow already.  I also stayed after the meeting to discuss flux measurements with Sachi.

We received some compressed air today.   #137 (with the visible window contamination) was sprayed with the air but it had no apparent effect on the marking.   The others will be cleaned in a similar manner when they are taken down to be packed for tomorrow.

We visited the Kanpur Cimel on the roof of the engineering building and found it to be working well and just adjusted the clock.  The windows had some dust on them which was quite noticeable and we will return to clean these most likely on Friday.

Yesterday (June 9th), #328 worked normally for most of the day, but I later found it pointing straight up as in cloud mode, but not apparently working.  When I activated the screen it briefly lit up and then went dead.  At that point, the thunderstorms were starting.  The next morning it was behaving normally again.   I seem to remember Wayne saying he kept finding it this way when he was here (pointing straight up).

The previous day I had also found that #328’s clock was about 9 minutes off.   This was probably due to the same problem we had with the automated data downloads when I was here in April– the cimel was configured to get its time corrected by the laptop whenever a download was performed but it never worked properly.  It may have worked better for later groups, however.  For me, this was enough reason to disconnect the DCP cable and just do manual downloads.

We did find a spare external Cimel battery on the Kanpur roof so we can now run five sunphotometers on the roof here, so we plan to put #328 up once again after the spatial analysis.

#328 was replaced with #3 today (which is once again using #444’s control box)– just the act of moving #3’s control box up to the roof caused it to lose power and the display went blank– so we reverted to #444’s box.

Alex sweated spectacularly, took photos of his food and pointed out that it was hot.

Brent leaves; #444 still not working.

Brent leaves Kanpur for Varanasi, then on to fix the Cimel at Ghandi College.  He will return here on the 12th.

#444 and #3 had new components installed that were brought by Alex.   #444 still does not work.   #3 seems to work properly, but apparently this control box is unreliable so we have either broken even on this chip switch or even lost something if #3 is less dependable now.

#158, #137, #83 and #328 are running on the roof now.   #328 (dual polar) did not seem to have as much data as it should have after yesterday’s test.   We’ll evaluate again after today.  It is downloading automatically to the PC, but not uploading to Aeronet as it should.  I don’t believe this ever worked for us back in May either, so it will need to be uploaded manually.   Tomorrow, either #328 or #158 will be replaced with #3 for further testing.

#137 was found to have a small blemish on it’s direct sun window.  It’s not clear if this was there before the June 7th deployment or not, since it’s subtle.   We can see if it has any apparent effect on AOD in comparison with the other Cimels on June 8th and 9th.  I will run them in BCLSUN mode for a while today to facilitate this, if the sky is suitable.

We are intending to have a spatial variability study around Kanpur on the 11th, but it has not been confirmed yet since Sachi is on travel.  I’ll try to firm this up with him by phone tonight if I don’t hear back from him.  It might be that some or most of the students will be unavailable after the 12th, so we must take advantage of their availability before this.

Brent will go North on the 13th and replace the DCP battery at Bareilly and retrieve the pyranometers at Pantnagar and Nainital so that we can get a post-deployment calibration on them at GSFC soon.

Central Calipso Overpass (June 7th) completed

Three mobile Cimel sites were operated along the central (nearest to Kanpur) Calipso overpass.   Cimels #3, #158 and #137 were deployed for the day and all operated without any apparent problems.  Conditions at the sites generally progressed from overcast to nearly clear by  mid-morning with increasing cloud cover the rest of the day.  Thin hazy cirrus clouds formed and dissipated continually over the course of the afternoon, frequently obscuring the sun.

North Site:  Ahmed/Anuj
Center Site: Joel/Harish the Second
South Site: Alex/Amit

Four microtop handheld sunphotometers were deployed along track and cross track from the center Cimel locations at a distance of 2.5km and operated for the hour centered on overpass.

The lack of problems with the field instrument suggest our new method of assessing instrument readiness is effective.  Two Cimels are placed side by side in opposition and  principal plane and almucantars are then performed.  The collimators of the Cimels clash with one another, knocking one Cimel to the ground.   The winner of each Cimel death match moves on to the next battle and ultimately the fittest sunphotometers are identified and selected for deployment.  Cimels losing early in the competition are dismantled and mocked.

Ready (almost) for June 7th Center Overpass

On schedule for Center Overpass activties on June 7th.  Three Cimels will be deployed as normal, though the spacing will not be consistent with the desired 20km separation because the track has moved over the Ganges river which greatly limits accessibility.

Handheld microtops crew (4) will be deployed around the center site as for the first center overpass.

#83 did not perform well on the roof today (also a very warm day) exhibiting ‘error at starting plot’ messages, etc.  #3, #137 and #158 will be deployed.

Mock Field Campaign

Today (May 4th) we conducted a practice run for the May 6th A-Train overpass near Kanpur.  We used the opportunity to test logistics, sites and training in the use of cimels, microtops, GPS and google earth to find measurement sites.  We left at ~5:30 am with four foreign scientists, 2 graduates students,  5 undergraduate students and Harish who does and knows all.  Using GPS and google earth maps we relatively painlessly found and established 3 Calipso target sites all within ~25 m of the predicted path.  Likewise we located four predetermined sites for microtops measurements that will provide some understanding of the .  Overall it was extremely successful and I believe everyone was quite happy with the results  AOD along the track ranged between 0.8 to 1.1 even in the high altitude site Nainital.  Dust, fossil fuel combustion and coal pollution contribute to an interesting aerosol layer.  All track and non track instruments seemed to functional normally.

The campaign was followed up by a mid afternoon training session on the microtops with the undergraduate students.  Plans were also discussed for non overpass measurements in and around Kanpur.

The Drum Sampler was fully installed and will begin operation tomorrow morning.

Tom and Wayne are preparing to take over coordination and operations from Joel and me.  It is extremely important that continuity between the foreign groups is established by the Indian participants who will have the experience from the previous campaigns as long as the Indian personnel remains the same.

bh

“the monkey’s paw is too calloused”

Posted by WWN

My assignment was to buy a monkey proof fence in less than 48 hours.

And it needed to fit in my luggage along with 2 two 36 inch long Yagi antennas.

What I learned;

No “so called” livestock supply store in the greater DC Metro area sells monkey fences.

They all sell monkey chow however.

All farms in the greater DC area have electricity and therefore battery power fence controllers are rare.
What I bought;

Zareba S12_-A controller ($70.00)
“Solid-state fence controllers are an effective and affordable option for controlling shorthaired livestock, small animals and pets with light to moderate weed conditions. Available for up to 10 miles of fence.
We recommend 6- or 12-volt rechargeable deep cycle batteries (not included with fence controller). Note: Frequently check and recharge your batteries to maintain secure fence operation.”

Insulators
2  bags of yellow; ($4.00)
Economy wood post insulator (SF25WP)
Bag of 25
# Economy wood-post insulator
# N-style wire channel
# Simple one-nail installation
# Nails included

3 bags of black ($6.00)
DARE Elfin 241 wood post insulators  (25 each)
Total 125 plastic for wood insulators with nails

656 ft of BAYGARD by Parmak
Portable Electric Fence Wire PM-121 ($24.00)
PVC coated fiberglass gives Baygard high strength as well as low stretch and sag properties.
High conductivity (low resistance) aluminum wire conductors.
Baygard wire is light weight, only 4.5 lb. (2 kg) per 1/4 mile
Baygard will not kink and is easy to re-roll and reuse.
Breaks can be rejoined by a knot.

My new friend, a middle aged woman with a mustache named Amy who works at

Bowen’s Farm supply in Annapolis says this won’t work because “the monkey’s paw is too calloused”.

April 29th Kanpur Update

The Lidar was transferred to the guest house and installed on the second floor balcony.  It seemed to perform well although during the hottest part of the day the airconditioner was not up to the 44°C heat.  The control unit was moved inside the compound which appeared to solve the problem.  It will be tested again tomorrow.  The pbl was ~4 km and the retrieval an AOD of 0.6 in the UV very close to the cimel observation.  Sebastian has done a superb job getting this up and running.

The drum sampler was put together and will be tested tomorrow on the compound roof where we also hope to install it.

Mikhail spent is final full day here lamenting his return.  He installed a dual polar on the roof of the Apt. with the new software.  He tested several other cimels and corrected some contact problems.  Two more cimels remain to be tested.  The vitel antenna failure is a great concern.  Wayne and Tom will bring two more yaggi antennas.  

Harish and Joel completed the set up of Barielly and established a temporary set up at Pantnagar.  Barally had some status errors during the heat of the day but Pantnagar seems to be working well.  They went onto Nainital and will establish that one tomorrow morning.  If they have a chance they will explore Almora.

Suresh Babu is at VSK installing that instrument.  He has one more day there before leaving.  At this writing I’ve not seen any data from the site.  

The souther site Chitrakut (sp) has monkey issues.  Wayne and tom will bring electric fence supplies (??) to provide some shock and awe to our little relatives.  Deployment will probably not be possible until around Friday and the fence there after.  I hope the little buggers stay away in the mean time.

We have two bicycles, two sim cards and a few wimpy mosquitos.  My cell is on the website as are other phone numbers.

Many thanks to Daya and Sumit for helpings greatly with the details today.

Thanks to Dave for getting the Calipso links up on the website.