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Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

PACDEX

The PACDEX “PACific Dust EXperiment” was conducted in April and May of 2007 to study long range transport of dust and pollution from Asia across the Pacific Ocean to North America. The main platform for PACDEX was the NCAR Gulfstream V aircraft “HIAPER” ( High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research )flew fourteen research flights over the Pacific Ocean. Flights were conducted from Colorado, Alaska, Japan, and Hawaii. A key component of this experiment was studying the radiative impact of dust and pollution plumes as they move across the Pacific. The primary instrument for measuring the radiative effects of dust and pollution (e.g. black carbon) was HARP (HIAPER Atmospheric Radiation Package). HARP consists of upward and downward viewing spectro radiometers that measure both solar spectral irradiance and actinic flux. The spectral irradiance instruments operate from 350 to 2200 nm with a spectral resolution (FWHM) of ~3.0 nm from 350-1000 nm and ~12 nm from 1000-2200 nm. The actinic flux measurements cover the wavelength range 270-680 nm and the FWHM varies from 1.7-2.1 nm. During PACDEX HARP collected nearly one million irradiance spectra (4GB) during about 120 flight hours. HIAPER encountered dust and pollution many times during PACDEX research flights; these encounters are the topic of current research in ARG.