NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The TC4 campaign is a multi-institutional effort that combines numerous NASA facilities, universities, public interest groups and teams of scientists leading their use of various instruments and projects. The campaign is focused in Costa Rica, because of its characteristic tropical atmosphere.

Dr. Ed Browell, senior research scientist at NASA Langley, is the principal investigator for two instruments that are flying on the DC-8 during the mission -- the Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) for the study of ozone and airborne particles and the Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment for the study of water vapor, particles and clouds. Image Above: The President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sanchez, on the left, toured the NASA DC-8 on July 27 during the NASA Tropical Composition Cloud and Climate Coupling (TC4) campaign. Browell is shown here answering a question that President Sanchez asked about the Saharan dust the research team observed to the east of Costa Rica over the Caribbean. Credit: John Hair, Co-Principal Investigator for DIAL.

Image Above: During President Sanchez's visit to the DC-8, Browell had the opportunity to tell him and the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, Mark Langdale (back left), about Langley's work with LASE and DIAL in TC-4. Rick Shetter, National Suborbital Education and Research Center (NSERC) director, is shown in the center of the picture. NSERC is a partnership among NASA, the University of North Dakota and the U.S. Air Force. Credit: John Hair, Co-Principal Investigator for DIAL.

The Researcher News
By: Katie Lorentz
Langley Research Center
Managing Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Adams