Open Access to Research Aircraft in the EUFAR Fleet
Brown, Philip
Met Office, UNITED KINGDOM

EUFAR (http://www.eufar.net) is the European Facility for Airborne Research and links together a number of operators of research aircraft and airborne instrumentation across Europe. Until now, it has provided Transnational Access to the facilities with funding support from the European Commission. However, it is now seeking to implement a new system in which aircraft access is provided in exchange for resources in-kind, independently of EC funding. Examples of the latter may include the provision of staff to work at the aircraft operator facility or contributions towards the development of new airborne instrumentation. The intention is to build medium- to longer-term collaborations between the particpating institutions and to provide wider access to airborne science facilities across Europe, beyond the existing communities.

The talk will describe this Open Access scheme with the aim of seeking expressions of interest from scientists and institutions who may wish to participate. It will also describe new facilities shortly to become available on the EUFAR website for identifying when and where flight campaigns organised by the different EUFAR aircraft operators will be taking place. This will indicate where there are additional opportunities for additional measurement interests such as satellite calibration and validation to be added.