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GOMO-Funded Project

Arctic AIR

Ice Albedo as seen from a plane
Image Credit: NOAA PMEL
  • Principal Investigator(s):
    • Jaixu Zhang
    • Calvin Mordy
  • Project Institution(s): PMEL
  • Fiscal Year: 2024
  • Award Period:
    10/01/2024 - 09/30/2026

The Arctic AIR (Arctic Airborne Investigations and Research) program conducts critical observations of physical, chemical, and biological processes in the US Arctic from NOAA’s Twin Otter aircraft. This includes air-deployment of meteorological and oceanographic monitoring instruments in seasons and regions that are otherwise difficult to sample, and overflights of research ships thereby expanding their spatial coverage. In 2023, the program introduced and tested a hyperspectral camera, designed to work alongside the upcoming Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite, set to launch in 2024. Data from these platforms will revolutionize how scientists can monitor rapidly changing phytoplankton communities across the Pacific Arctic, and their subsequent impacts on marine ecosystems.

Project Highlights
  1. 2023: Over 60 flight hours were completed using NOAA’s Twin Otter aircraft during spring and fall missions, with an additional 12 oceanographic assets and 35 meteorological assets deployed. Flights were flown over the Bering and Chukchi seas, with additional test flights planned from Vandenberg AFB to test a new hyperspectral camera aboard a FRV-90 drone.
Project Logs

2024 September Arctic AIR field campaign – Daily logs – Google Docs

Project Gallery

The Twin Otter aircraft (top) and our vision for multi-platform monitoring of phytoplankton communities including HABs (bottom)
June flight tracks, with red indicating periods when hyperspectral data was collected. The yellow box is the region shown in the following photo
June hyperspectral images where a bloom was detected at DBO3 (near Point Hope)

Project Data

For this nascent, the website and data pathways are still in development