SABRE 2023 Arctic Resources

Programs

NOAA Climate.gov

Platforms: Aircraft

NASA Johnson Space Center: WB-57

Photos

Cold SABRE 2023

flickr album: Cold SABRE 2023

SABRE 2023 team with research aircraft
SABRE 2023 participants with the NASA WB-57. Eielson AFB, Fairbanks North Star Borough, AK, March 2023. Photo: Max Dollner, University of Vienna

Postcards

COLD SABRE 2023 Postcard from the Field

Postcard from the Field: CSL's SABRE Mission Gets Airborne in Alaska to Study the Polar Stratosphere. 18 May 2023

The first series of research flights under NOAA CSL's airborne science mission to the stratosphere was completed in March, and analysis is now underway on an unprecedented data set detailing the composition and chemistry of the mid-latitude and polar stratosphere.
The overall mission, known as SABRE (Stratospheric Aerosol Processes, Budget, and Radiative Effects), is making use of one of NASA's WB-57 high altitude research aircraft to collect the most detailed measurements to date of gases and aerosols in the stratosphere. The motivation behind SABRE, the flagship field campaign of NOAA's Earth's Radiation Budget (ERB) research program, is to improve our fundamental understanding of the chemical composition of the stratosphere and the processes that govern it. Of particular importance to this project is understanding how natural events (e.g., volcanic eruptions and wildfire pyrocumulonimbus) and human-caused emissions (e.g., rocket exhaust) perturb stratospheric aerosol composition, microphysics and radiative properties, which in turn can have significant impacts on stratospheric ozone chemistry and our global climate. Understanding the current state of our stratosphere is especially critical for evaluating how the stratosphere will respond to direct injection of sulfate aerosol, which is proposed as a method of solar radiation management or climate intervention.
This first deployment, dubbed "Cold SABRE", operated out of Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, Alaska. Twelve research flights (from Alaska–there were also the two transits each direction and three science flights from Houston) were conducted from late February through late March, probing the very well-aged air of the polar stratosphere and polar vortex. The aircraft carried 17 state-of-the-art instruments, several of which were designed and custom-built at CSL, to measure ozone, water vapor, SO2, NOx, chlorine and bromine gases, black carbon, aerosol size distributions, and aerosol chemical composition. The new technologies and advanced instrumentation on-board the aircraft for SABRE are able to make measurements at much lower levels than was possible on past missions and to make new measurements of chemicals that have never been directly measured in the stratosphere.

SABRE is a NOAA Earth's Radiation Budget (ERB) Initiative project.
Learn more about SABRE.

Top left: WB-57 on take-off from Eielson Air Force Base (photo by Max Dollner). Middle left: Researchers from the University of Vienna work on their wing-mounted cloud and aerosol instrument. Middle: CSL scientist Chuck Brock works on his aerosol sizing and distribution instrument, which gets mounted within a pallet in the belly of the aircraft. Bottom left: Team photo of scientists, pilots, engineers, and ground crew in front of the WB-57 at Eielson Air Force Base. Left: Enhanced solar activity brought stunning displays of aurora borealis during the project (photo by Max Dollner).