MACSSIMIZE is a project within YOPP (Year Of Polar Prediction)

The overarching aims of this project are to make the UK’s environmental prediction services for the polar regions world leading, through a better understanding of key physical processes and their improved representation within numerical weather and climate prediction systems. In so doing, improve environmental prediction globally via improved process representation and polar/mid-latitude linkages.

The FAAM BAe-146 aircraft was detached on a field campaign (~3 week detachment to Fairbanks, Alaska, during March 2018) to obtain novel observations from the Arctic of surface emissivity over snow & sea ice; surface and boundary-layer processes over snow & sea ice; cloud microphysics over & downwind of sea ice; and orographic flows & their leeside impacts. Targets are snow emissivity in conjunction with satellite overpasses and ground-based measurements of snow properties over land and sea ice; Boundary Layer and surface exchange processes over sea-ice and the marginal-ice-zone; clouds, aerosols and radiative impacts on energy balance; orographic flows and gravity waves from the Brooks or Alaska mountain ranges;