Mission 14

ER-2 Sortie 00-175

Wednesday, September 13, 2000

Flight Scientist: S. Platnick

Objectives and Summary:  (1) Fly off the Namibian coast during a Terra overpass of Etosha National Park (ENP), Namibia, for clear sky and cloud validation, (2) Image ENP and a burn scar to the north-north-west, (3) Overfly the Okwa River and Tshaney SAVE sites in Botswana.

The University of Washington CV-580 (based in Walvis Bay, Namibia) sampled Northern Namibia coastal stratus during the Terra/ER-2 overflights. The UK C130 (based in Windhoek, Namibia) did clear sky work in the vicinity of ENP.

The ER-2 track parallel to Terra, occurring at the same time as the overpass but approximately 250 km west of the satellite ground track, included broken low and midlevel clouds to the south and marine stratocumulus to the north.

Highlights: Coastal stratus along northern Namibian coast with UW CV-580 in situ cloud sampling; the Okwa River and Tshaney SAVE sites in Botswana.

ER-2 Mission:   Pilot:             Dave Wright

                             Takeoff         0640 UTC

                             Landing        1440 UTC

                             Duration       8:00

Surface sites, features:

Tshaney, Botswana (24° 03.4’ S, 21° 53.4’ E).

Namib Desert (vicinity of 23° 50 S, 15° 00’ E and 20° 30 S, 13° 3s0’ E).

Etosha Pan and National Park, Namibia,  AERONET sun photometer (vicinity of 18° 45’ S, 16° 30’ E).

Okwa River, Botswana (22° 24.5’ S, 21° 42.8’ E).

Meteorology:

Wednesday’s forecast (Steve Medcalf, SAWB): A cold front is pushing through the Cape with a coastal low on the southeast coast. The ridge from the Indian ocean high has weakened with moist influx confined to the Zambezi valley. A coastal low has developed along the Namibian coast. Aloft, a well-marked trough is developing to the west.

Showers are expected along the southwestern and southern coastal regions with snow on the mountain ranges of the southwestern and southern Cape. A band of middle level moisture has spread into the southern and central parts of Namibia and central Botswana. Subsidence ahead of the approaching trough is causing fine weather over northern Namibia. Isolated thundershowers are possible over the central interior of South Africa.

ER-2 science instrument payload and status:

 ER-2 Ground Track: