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So we're here in Praia da Vitória in the Azore

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Islands. That's on a latitude that's about the same as Washington

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D.C. The other day we flew all the way from Ascension Island, which is about

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500 miles south of the equator. up here

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to Praia da Vitória. Now when we did that, we crossed from the Southern

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Hemisphere into the Northern hemisphere. And in fact we crossed from the southern

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climate into the northern climate. So the flight was

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very interesting because on the Southern Hemisphere we

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flew through a lot of biomass burning plumes, which were coming out of Africa,

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and with our instrument we can measure the dust particles and the biomass

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burning particles. And then we crossed the equator and then we

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flew in this big huge Saharan dust plume coming out of

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Africa traveling across the Atlantic ocean. Mineral dust is about half of

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the globally emitted aerosol mass per year, and we got the chance

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to measure all those dust particles and this will allow us to understand

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the interaction of the dust particles with the climate.

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Yeah, I think it's quite exciting to have this data and look at this.. So for the U.S. it's really important because, of course, all hurricanes

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start, just around Africa in the Atlantic

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ocean, they move across the Atlantic. So the dry air

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and the dust getting wrapped into these hurricanes, they impact hurricanes.

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So you're measurements are really really important for understanding this critical

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science topic for people in the U.S.

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Yesterday we flew from Lajes on the island of Terceira, which is the eastern

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most island of the Azores. And we flew up over the Greenland ice sheet

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as far north as we could and did a profile over

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a measurement site called Eureka, which is about 85 degrees north.

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Profiled down and then back in to Kangerlussuaq in Greenland.

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We're on the western edge about midway down the island,

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and behind me is the Russell glacier, which is fed by the

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Greenland ice sheet, which is a huge source of water

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to the oceans when this melts. If glaciers are over water,

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they generally don't have any effect on sea level rise. But a glacier like this

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that's on the land will have a huge effect on sea level rise. It's been

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estimated that 80,000 gallons a day

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comes out of these glaciers. On yesterday's flight,

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we saw really high concentrations of CO and a lot of

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biomass burning from all the fires in Siberia. Eventually

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that biomass burning emissions, like black carbon,

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they'll be deposited onto the Greenland ice sheet and here

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here you can see a lot of the black debris that forms from that,

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which actually makes it start to thaw out a lot quicker because of the dark

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color that absorbs extra heat.

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We're here at the end of the ATom-1 deployment.

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For our last two flights we flew from Kangerlussuaq

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in Greenland down to Minneapolis. And then we flew from Minneapolis

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back to Palmdale. So on the flight from Kangerlussuaq, we actually saw quite

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a lot of methane as we flew over the Hudson Bay Lowlands, and then we also

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saw a lot of methane as we arrived in to do a low approach over Park

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Falls, Wisconsin. The Hudson Bay Lowands are the largest source of natural

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methane on the North American continent, so I shouldn't have been too surprised.

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Wisconsin has quite a lot of agriculture, and there's a lot of

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methane that comes from agricultural sources. So in the last flight

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we found a lot of biomass burning aerosols again.

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We have seen it during the whole campaign. So biomass burning is a big source for aerosols and gases

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and with the climate warming up there is predictions showing that the number of fires

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might go up. So is the tie-up at the end of ATom.

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As you can see we actually have a completely empty aircraft. All

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of the bigwigs and senior scientists have gone home, so it's just the

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instrument people who are still here. But we've managed to get everything off in I think

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record time, two days. It took us two weeks or more? I think it took us four weeks

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to get everything in and it's really hard to believe that it took us less than

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two days to get everything out. So we will see you all again in December

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for the next start up of ATom-2, which will do the same flights

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around the world and hopefully we'll get very different conditions for that.