Dynamical and ozone measurements by constant volume balloons in the low troposphere during ESCOMPTE experiment
Résumé
The objectives of the ESCOMPTE program concern the study of emission of the primary pollutants in industrial and urban areas, their transport and their diffusion in the atmosphere. This experiment, realized in the southeast of France on a 120km*120km, can be used to validate and to improve chemical transport numerical models. One major aim of this experiment is to follow the pollutant plume, and to investigate its thermodynamical and chemical time evolution. This is realized with constant volume balloons (CVB), operated by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and instrumented by the Laboratoire d'Aérologie (LA) and Météo France. The CVBs, located by GPS and equipped with thermodynamical and ozone sensors, fly at a constant density level in the atmospheric boundary layer. These CVBs constitute a way to validate the high resolution trajectories against in situ measurements. During the ESCOMPTE campaign which took place in June and July 2001, thirty-three CVB flights were made, fifteen of them with ozone measurements. We present (i) the experimental system including CVB, radiosonde and balloon tracking stations, (ii) the first results of the different flights, in particular the time evolution of the ozone along the CVB trajectories.
