Arctic POlar Night EXperiment (PONEX)
aircraft campaign
Zen Mariani, Alexei Korolev, Zhipeng Qu, Jason Cole, Howard Barker (Environment and Climate Change Canada)
Mengistu Wolde, Cuong Nguyen, Natalia Bliankinshtein, Leonid Nichman (National Research Council of Canada)
Kaley Walker, Kim Strong (University of Toronto)
Aldona Wiacek (Saint Mary’s University)
Adam Bourassa, Doug Degenstein (University of Saskatchewan)
Jean-Pierre Blanchet (Université du Québec à Montréal)

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

Background The Polar regions are an integral part of Earth's energy budget and climate.
 Arctic clouds formation during winter is poorly understood due to lack of observations and remoteness.
Long-Range Transport•••

Arctic cloud formation are strongly
related to aerosol-cloud interaction
processes.
Long-range transport of aerosols fromthe mid-latitudes to Polar region
during winter time
Sulfuric acid (lowering freezing point,
deactivation of ice nucleation) 
impact on the formation of ice clouds,
affecting ice particle sizes andconcentration

Polar Vortex Weakening

Optically Thin Ice Clouds (OTIC)

Screen (Weather, 2021)••••

Arctic warms much fasterPolar vortex & jet stream
weakening
Cold Arctic air to spill south
Warm air to move north

Courtesy J.P. Blanchet• Vast Arctic areas are covered by verticallyextended optically thin ice clouds (OTIC).
• Mechanisms of OTIC formation are notwell understood.
• OTICs may play important role in theinvigoration of polar night storms

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

2

Background
Airborne campaigns to study Arctic during last 20 years
All aircraft campaigns wereperformed during polar day.

Cloud genesis, radiation transfer andchemical processes in Arctic during
polar nights dramatically differ fromthose during polar days. Despite ofnumerous field campaigns in Arctic
regions, most of them were conductedduring polar days or during polar
sunrise or sunset. Until now Arctic
environment during nighttime remains
poorly explored.
It is proposed to conduct the first
Arctic polar night airborne field
campaign.

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy3

Arctic Polar Night Experiment (PONEX)
Overarching goal: Improving weather and climate forecast in the polar regions, througha better understanding of key physical processes and improved
representations of those processes within numerical weather andclimate prediction systems.

Objectives:
Sub-orbital component• Characterize cal/val of AOS-HAWC observations
during its preparatory phase and EarthCARE
observations during its post-launch phase via anaircraft field campaign• Address the cal/val science objectives for bothsatellite missions’ sub-orbital components,
leveraging the two opportunities into a single field
campaign

Science component• Obtain novel observations of the Arctic surface emissivity andthermal profiles over snow and sea ice, cloud microphysics andaerosols, boundary layer during the polar night.
• Obtain new knowledge on the formation mechanism of optically thin
ice clouds (OTIC). Explore feedback between OTICs and radiation
processes in Arctic region. Explore the effect of OTICs on initiationof Arctic storms during polar night.
• Explore transport of air pollutants in Arctic regions during the polarnight.
• Use these observations to develop new parameterizations suitable
for numerical weather and climate prediction models.

ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy

4

Potential locations and flight operations for the NRC
Convair580 during PONEX (radial return flight)

NRC/ECCC Arctic airborne field campaigns:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

BASE, Inuvik, 1994
FIRE-ACE, Inuvik, 1998
STAR. Iqaluit, 2007
ISDAC, Barrow, Alaska, 2008 (DOE)
RadSnowExp, Iqaluit, 2018 (ESA)

NRC(Rome),Convair-580,
ISDAC, Barrow (Utqiagvik), Alaska, April 20085
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati
ItalyExperimental Design
Location: Inuvik (NWT), warm hangar (absolutely critical), instrumentation and meeting rooms, hotel accommodation, restaurants
Timeframe:• 2025: two 3-week windows with a three week pause in-between. This will enable observations during polar night (1st stage) andpolar sunrise to enable operations of ALI (2nd stage).
• Stage 1: three weeks in January 2025 followed by a three week pause• Stage 2: three weeks in late February 2025
• Flight operations: 15-20 flights (~60-80h) over 40-45 days

Research flight objectives:• Weather flights aiming to study mechanisms of ice initiation in polar night OTICs, modulation of radiative fluxes by OTICs,
spatio-temporal variability of polar night clouds, role of dynamics in formation of OTICs, mixed-phase clouds during polarnights, INP/CCN concentrations, effect of pollutants of ice initiation.
• Clear sky flights aiming to study aerosol size distributions, aerosol composition, identification of natural and anthropogenicaerosols, vertical and horizontal variability of aerosols, clear-sky radiative fluxes, trace gases (O3, NOx, SO2, CO2, H2O etc.)
horizontal and vertical variability, INP/CCN measurements.
• Suborbital flights provide cal/val for HAWC-AOS & EarthCARE mission

Aircraft instrumentation (TBD):
••
•
•
•
•
•

FIRR-2 (ground-based version of TICFIRE) and ALI (HAWC-AOS instruments)
Radars: X, W, Ka-bandElastic cloud lidar (zenith, 355 nm)
HiSRAMS (microwave sounder for temperature and water vapour)Aerosol mass spectrometer, aerosol size spectrometers, INP spectrometer, CCN, trace gases
Cloud microphysical instrumentation (2DS, HVPS, CDP, CIP, HSI, Extinction, hot-wires, RID)
Aircraft data and atmospheric state probes
ESA-JAXA Pre-Launch EarthCARE Science and Validation Workshop, 13-17 November 2023 | ESA-ESRIN, Frascati (Rome), Italy6

Benefits for ESA’s EarthCARE mission
EarthCARE
instruments

ATLID

355 nmAtmospheric Lidar

CPR

94 GHz CloudProfiling Radar

MSI

BBR

Multispectral
ImagerBroadband
Radiometer

1D & 3D Radiative transfer simulation

Surface &atmosphereproperties

Aerosols

CloudsClosure assessment

Radiation

ECMWF or climatology

Convair-580
instruments
Surface
sites

HiSRAMS

Aerosol insitu probes

Inuvik, Iqaluit, Eureka & Alert(supporting for the cal/val activities)

ALI

355 nmlidar

X, W-band
radarsCloud insitu probes

3D sceneconstruction
algorithm

FIRR-2(TICFIRE)

Broadband
radiometers