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IAGOS Instrument Package successfully installed on board of Lufthansa A340 'Viersen'

On Friday, 8.7.2011, the new IAGOS equipment started operation on board of the A340-300 "Viersen" of Lufthansa for it's first flight from Frankfurt to Lagos.

The IAGOS instrument package consists of fully automatic instruments that continuously probe the atmosphere for water vapour, ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and cloud particles. It is mounted in a dedicated rack installed the avionics compartment of the Airbus A340.

After each flight, the data are transmitted via the mobile GSM network to the IAGOS database in Toulouse, where they are analysed and inspected for quality.

The inlet probes, which connect the instruments to the atmosphere, are mounted on a special plate in the fuselage, close to the nose of the aircraft. The plate also carries a new backscatter probe for the measurement of cloud particles.

The instrument package had been developed under the European Sixth Framework Programme as part of IAGOS-DS, a Design Study for New Research Infrastructures. Last week, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) approved the IAGOS installation as a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) after successfull completion of the required ground tests. The technical work was conducted by the experts of Lufthansa Technik and Sabena Technics with assistance of scientists and engineers from Laboratoire d' Aerologie, Toulouse, Forschungszentrum Jülich and University of Manchester, who are responsible for the scientific quality of the measurements, under support of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the project ALLAS.

During the coming weeks, the new instruments will undergo a thorough scientific evaluation for performance and data quality. After completion of this phase, the data will be made available to users world wide, such as researchers and students engaged in climate and air quality modeling.