One of the pressures from our changing climate is to increase the accuracy of climactic observations and weather prediction. One project to do just that is in its fourth decade, with a new sensor suite onboard a Lufthansa A350.
“The CARIBIC aircraft is indeed unique in the world,” explains Dr Andreas Zahn from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, who is the coordinator of IAGOS-CARIBIC. (That’s the In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System programme, one of whose projects is the Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container project.)
Essentially, the goal is to take measurements of trace gases, aerosols and clouds in the troposphere, the zone 9-12km (29-39,000 feet) above sea level, precisely where airliners fly and where some of the most crucial climactic and meteorological data are to be found. From the outside, the difference is a small sensor panel. But on the inside, there’s 1.6 tons of instrumentation.
CARIBIC’s equipment compares to what you might find on a large dedicated research aircraft, and has been deployed since the 1990s: first on an LTU Boeing 767, then on a Lufthansa A340-600 since 2004, and now with A350-900 registered D-AIXJ and named “Erfurt”, after the German city. At the time of writing, the aircraft had just returned to Frankfurt after recent roundtrips to Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Chicago and Bangkok, sensors in place.
Other airlines, including Air France, Air Namibia, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Iberia, and Sabena have also been involved with the programme. Similar programmes with scientific sensors aboard commercial airliners exist elsewhere, including the TAMDAR system created by NASA and AirDat, which was previously operated by Panasonic Avionics and is currently at FLYHT.
The goal, Zahn says, is to “understand which processes are changing, to what extent and how they will influence Earth’s climate in the future. No other observation system worldwide, neither on ground nor on satellite, can provide such high-resolution multi-parameter data from the free atmosphere.”
Indeed, part of the programme is to compare the actual measurements taken from the aircraft with the observations of satellites and other modelling work.
“The multi-parameter data collected during IAGOS-CARIBIC,” Lufthansa explains when discussing the kit onboard its aircraft, “is better suited for a better understanding of atmospheric processes ongoing in the atmosphere, their quantification and how this compares with the outcome of atmospheric and climate models.”
A dozen European research institutes are using the nearly two dozen instruments aboard CARIBIC to measure some 100 trace gases, aerosol and cloud parameters. The weight of each instrument is usually between 12 and 100kg, totalling 1.6t.
A Lufthansa expert says they include “different types of chemical mass spectrometry, different laser spectroscopic techniques, UV photometry or chemiluminescence detection. About half are custom-made, the other half are based on commercial devices that are modified for the fully-automated and long-term use on board aircraft,” fully certified of course.
Almost all the raw data itself is stored on a central server during the flight, rather than being transmitted over the inflight satellite connectivity systems aboard the A350. But a subset of the roughly 100MB per flight is sent over the satcom, for weather forecasting and use in the satellite comparison work.
After the flight, scientists from the programme can download, process and analyse the rest of the data, before making it available online. Worldwide, more than 420 scientific publications have been based on the IAGOS programme, including CARIBIC, since the mid-1990s.
And it’s all thanks to a consortium of scientific institutes led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, working over a four-year planning phase with nearly a dozen companies, from Lufthansa and its MRO arm Lufthansa Technik through to enviscope, Dynatec, Safran and Airbus to get the latest suite on board D-AIXJ.
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We are talking about this over in our Challenges area – With the aviation industry often getting bad press in regards to climate change, do you believe that the benefits which arise from collecting this data should be more widely shared? Join the discussion.
Author: John Walton
Published: 25th May 2021
Image credit: Lufthansa
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