Demonstration of an Aircraft System for Real-Time Discrimination & Reporting of Dust, Volcanic Ash, Ice and Super-cooled Water Particles.

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This proposal aims to demonstrate an aircraft based measurement and reporting system for in situ real-time discrimination of single coarse dust, ash, super-cooled water and ice particles . The new system will incorporate new single particle polarization detector technology into an existing airborne certified single particle backscatter spectrometer that has been developed for commercial airliners. The target for the demonstrator will initially be the commercial airline industry, with a focus on contributing to civil aircraft safety and Government contingency applications, but it will also serve for global atmospheric research and monitoring applications, e.g. to assist assessment of the impact of aircraft operations on the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere region. It will also improve meteorological information currently broadcast via the World Meteorological Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR) system from commercial aircraft as well as the UK Science community by providing enhanced measurement capability to their research aircraft. An existing aircraft test bed, the FAAM BAe 146 research aircraft, operated jointly by the UK Meteorological Office and NERC, and which operates under civil aircraft rules, has already been identified for the demonstration/flight validation aspect of the proposed work. An existing measurement system we propose to base the new novel demonstrator on is already flying on this aircraft. We therefore propose to use the FAAM BAe 146 platform to flight validate the new measurement system to minimize costs. The existing system, a miniature non-flow invasive backscatter cloud spectrometer (BCP-100) was developed for the European Research Infrastructure Programme, IAGOS (In-Service Aircraft for Global Observing System), Figure 1. This has already received European Supplemental Type Certification (STC) approval for operation on Airbus A-320 series civil airliners as a component of the IAGOS instrument package programme and this will be expanded to other Airbus types, including A320/40, as IAGOS increases its fleet. The current Airbus platforms with their novel miniature IAGOS instrument packages will also offer a guaranteed future market base for the new system via upgrades and replacements, which will be managed by IAGOS and its extensive links with commercial carriers. Subsequent demonstration of the new system in this high profile environment for both airline safety and improved weather prediction and climate monitoring applications will be used to expand potential market for this system to other aircraft manufacturers with whom IAGOS is already in discussion.