N. Pole to S. Pole 4

Unique travel onboard a research jet from Colorado to Alaska, Hawaii, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, Saipan, Midway Island and back to Anchorage and Colorado. This was the fourth of five pole-to-pole trips of the NSF GV on the HIPPO project.

Part two: Kona, Hawaii

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We arrived in Kona after an 8.8 hour flight, performing 8 slow dips from 28,000 to 1,000 feet and ascending back up. On the way to Cold Bay, Alaska and for the next two hours after Cold Bay we did not see anything but clouds. Solid decks, stacked at two levels and sometimes at three … Read more

To Kona

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Today we are leaving for Kona, Hawaii. The flight will take us over Cold Bay in the Aleutian chain of islands. Anchorage is seeing us off with beautiful weather, few clouds and temperature in the 60s F. We will probably miss this cool weather very soon. The GV is already on the ramp, waiting for … Read more

Part one: Anchorage

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This adventure is phase 4 of the research project that was designed to study the distributions of greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere in 2009-2011. The scientific part of it will be covered elsewhere; here we will only take note of the travel part of it, for the project covered more ground (or, rather, water) … Read more