Dear IHOP_2002 participants
We wanted to pass along some recent decisions concerning IHOP_2002.
1. As many of you know the project was granted an allocation of 2.3 million dollars from the NSF deployment pool. This allocation was ~300 K less than our full request. At the last planning meeting we discussed how to implement these cuts and it looked like a combination of several options would be necessary (i.e., shortening of the project, reduced flight hours, reduced expendables and dropping an instrument or two). We are pleased to say that it now looks as if the main visible impact of these cuts will be to shorten the project so that the end date is 25 June. So the offical IHOP_2002 dates are now 13 May through 25 June 2002.
2. Although we have another meeting with the military controllers and the FAA during the week of 11 February, we are certain that the Vance MOA greatly impacts our ability to conduct airborne operations, especially for the ABL and CI groups. As a result of discussions within the project office and with members of the science team, we will be moving the S-Pol location from near the CART site to a site in the vicinity of the Oklahoma panhandle. We are in the process of selecting an exact location soon with a site survey taking place in the coming weeks. The NASA lidars (yes it looks like they will be funded) consisting of the scanning Raman, HARLEY (a novel backscatter lidar) and GLOW (a Doppler system) will be located with 20-30 km of S-Pol at a site coincident with the NCAR ISS and possibly additional instrumentation. These changes ripple through the project impacting mobile operations and ABL flux site locations and flight plans.
3. The media planning and contact has begun. It has been proposed to us that the first day of IHOP_2002 include media presentations/open house at the airport and at the operations center. Perhaps the mobile systems could come to the airport for this effort. NOAA and NSF/NCAR press folks are involved in the planning. I consider this important as it helps explain to the public how scientists are spending their tax dollars. It is good to have the media day as close to the start of the project as possible (esp. informing the public with 9-11 and worries that could result from our doing low-level flights and dropsondes). Having the media day folded into our first day means that we do not have to declare a pre-planned down-day within the middle of the experiment. Filming may also take place at S-Pol and at the NASA lidar/NCAR ISS site, but we do not expect a full-scale media invasion at our remote locations. Comments are welcome on this plan.
4. Plans are moving ahead in a very positive way on several new fronts such as permission from the FAA for the DLR Falcon to fly in this country (more fallout from 9-11 on the aircraft front), on the dedicated dropsonde aircraft and on NWS supplemental soundings.
More at a future date on these and other issues.
Best regards
Dave Parsons on behalf of the IHOP project office