The C-130 flight track is plotted on a GAC image which is recorded at a lower resolution than the HRPT images used on previous days.
Two cloud layers could be seen on the radar, a boundary layer cloud up to 0.5 km and a second stratus layer from 3-4.5 km. These layers matched the humidity profile on the 00 UT sounding. The lidar was blocked by the boundary layer cloud.
The 3-4.5 km stratus layer appeared to be thining in the afternoon on the radar and on the satellite image. Cirrus were over the ship in the morning but they appear to have dissipated before the flight on both the lidar and the satellite images.
Winds were light easterly at the surface, but at the 3-4.5 km level they were very light (5 kts) and southerly.
This is the flight where the ER-2 MAS found a strange dark object which was probably a cloud shadow. It only appeared in channels with solar reflectance and not in the 11 micron channel. I suspect that it was a shadow from a small cirrus cloud to the south. Some small clouds casting shadows can be seen on the C-130 flight track image. Unfortunately, this is a blow-up from a low resolution GAC image. We will try to get a high resolution image later.
The trajectories to SHEBA ship show most of the air came from a short distance north of the ship in the lower levels, surface to 3.0 km. This air looped around the high north of the ship. The higher air came from the Siberian coast to the southwest. The 6.0 km tractory flows from Alaska acrossed the Bering Straights through northeastern Siberia while the 9.0 km trajectory south of Siberia near Mongolia.
The trajectories to Barrow show the low level, surface-1.5 km air coming from the east, the Beaufort Sea after starting far north near the pole. The 1.5 km trajectory has a shorter length and remains in the Beaufort Sea. The 3.0 km trajectory loops in the lower Arctic Ocean, probably due to light winds at this level 2-3 days earlier. The higher level trajectories, 6 and 9 km, show air coming from the northern Pacific by a long loop that crossed western Canada and then approached Barrow from the southeast acrossed Alaska's North Slope.
