Aircraft Hand Held Microtops Measurements
On various occasions Dr. Antony Clarke and I (John Porter) have carried
out hand held sun photometer measurements from light aircraft. As it
turns out we were not the first to do this. Dr. Glen Shaw and Dr.
Hal Maring had also done this type of measurements independently.
Recently our paper which discusses this topic has been
accepted (in J. Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 2007). Although the
method can provide quantitative mesurements, it involves a significant
amount of effort and approximately 90% of the measurements are
rejected.
The figure below shows measurements made during a United Arab Emirates
experiment using a hand held sun photometer. The open circles are the
rejected sun photometer measurements. The solid circles are those that
are considered to be good. The solid line is the aircraft altitude (see
label on right side of graph).
