In October 2012, a small flight team including staff from New Mexico State University (NMSU) and Sandia began the first in a series of test flights for the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Facility to evaluate various unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in the frigid Arctic conditions at Oliktok Point, Alaska. For eight days, the team [...]
It’s that time of year again, when we check in to see where the annual Arctic sea ice minimum will end up. We haven’t quite bottomed out at the end of the melt season, yet, but already 2012 has set new records for smallest Arctic sea ice extent and volume, smashing through the numbers from 2007. Records are often [...]
Air-quality monitoring can be a tricky business. Gasses may be blown into the sampling site from another area, they may leak out of an air sample before it can be analyzed, or the sampling container itself may introduce compounds, emitted through off-gassing. If samples are being gathered in remote areas, it can also be difficult getting bulky [...]