facts please
Bigpants,
>>>"Nice to hear that the RJ is well equipped but where was it today? How many flying hours? Where did it go? Who else is flying and gathering data?"
Tucked up in its hangar at Cranfield. Science and operational considerations have determined that the best flight opportunity for data is tomorrow (Monday). The FAAM website shows flight B528, the crew list and the sortie brief. You can even follow the aircraft track plot in flight from the website.
Continuous sampling flights are an inefficient use of limited aircraft and crew hours. The data from the flights are used to calibrate the computer models which produce the plots you see published. Fixing model calculations with in situ measurements in this way keeps the model under control. Each science flight requires significant preflight instrument preparation (typ 3hrs) and post flight data reduction (typ several hours) so it is impractical to operate with continuous in situ measurements, the model runs every six hours routinely. Occasionally back to back flights are flown but if this is done too frequently there is danger of a backlog of unprocessed data which is no good to anybody in the rapidly developing volcano situation.
Much of the work of the 146 is model validation, particularly for satellite measurements where the aircraft can fly profiles or drop sondes at times of satellite overpasses and so get in situ measurements down to the surface simultaneous with the satellite.
Jim