On our seventh research flight, we left Punta Arenas, Chile
and flew to Ascension Island in the middle of the south Atlantic ocean.
This is often the most stressful flight for the pilots,
because there are not many places we can divert to. Thankfully, we had pretty good weather this time around
and we made it without incident. Last time we were in Ascension, in August,
the air quality was pretty bad. There were fires from Africa,
influencing everything. This time around, the air quality was actually pretty good;
we could actually see the ground on our way in. As we left Ascension,
on our eighth research flight, heading to Lajes in the Azore Islands,
we saw all the pollution Ascension had seen last time around, but we saw it
as soon as we left Ascension and for nearly three hours as we were flying north.
We saw fresh fires from Africa and the concentrations
in that were huge. There was a mixture of emissions from the fires,
dust from the Sahara and everything else mixed in together.
So it made for probably the most exciting chemistry we've seen, as we flew along
or probably the most depressing, too.