The campaign was focussed on the study of boundary layer processes over Antarctic sea ice and was conducted in very close cooperation with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). The aircraft Polar5 and a BAS Twin Otter did coordinated flights for meteorological measurements during a period of four weeks in February 2010 in Antarctica. The study addressed these subjects:

Inter-comparison flight
An intercomparison flight between both research aircraft, partially in very close formation, showed very good agreement in the wind measurements.

Heat and moisture flux from leads and polynias
For the energy and moisture exchange between the atmosphere and the ice covered ocean, leads and polynias play an important role. This is documented by many modelling studies, but only very few observations exist yet. Therefore we flew three missions to the Ronne Polynia, one of them together with the BAS Twin Otter to measure simultaneously the boundary layer modification and heat transfer over the polynia. The data suggest a significant heat flux to the atmosphere and will form a basis for simulation with a mesoscale model.           

Sea ice roughness
In recent years we have developed methods to represent the surface roughness of sea ice in atmospheric models. These parameterisations have been based on measurements over moderately rough arctic sea ice and take ridge height and distribution into account. They are well proven for applications in simulations of flow situations in the northern polar ocean. To test and prove if they can be applied for antarctic conditions, measurements were carried out along low-level legs flown during 5 flights over the sea ice in the Weddell Sea.