Unusual aircraft zigzagged over Flow Country
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An aircraft that touched down at Wick airport yesterday was no ordinary plane and contains a specialist laboratory carrying out climate research related to the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland.
Local photographer Alan McGee captured a detailed picture of the aircraft as it touched down at Wick John O'Groat Airport at 12.50pm on Tuesday.
The aircraft operates as an airborne laboratory with the research being carried out by the UK’s FAAM Airborne Laboratory. It takes part in global operations to research issues around climate change, extreme weather and air pollution.
A FAAM spokesperson said: "We were flying over the Flow Country in Scotland yesterday for the Methane Emissions from Wetlands in Scotland (MEWS) campaign. MEWS is one of our new Research Runway campaigns, aimed at helping scientists to run a mini-project to test the scope of an idea. MEWS is run by scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London, led by Dr James France and supported by Steph Batten."
The BAe-146-301 is a 4-engined airliner capable of operating from 50ft above the ground to 35,000ft, for flights that can last over five hours, whilst carrying research instrumentation of up to 4000kg and up to 21 crew members.
The large existing instrumentation suite is optimised for carrying out "atmospheric science work". The aircraft is based at Cranfield in Bedfordshire, but can be deployed globally.
Two MEWS flights took place yesterday, the first taking off from Cranfield Airport and landing at Wick for refuelling, the second taking off from Wick and returning to Cranfield. Both flights were successful in capturing methane building downwind of the bogs, with ideal conditions for the planned flying.
The FAAM spokesperson continued: "Atmospheric concentrations of methane have increased rapidly since 2007, and there is evidence of wetland emissions being at least partially responsible for this acceleration. Large areas remain that have little-to-no in situ data recorded."
The Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland is the largest blanket bog in Europe, covering an area of 4000km2, and hosting the largest stretches of deep peats (>0.5m) in the country, with environments ranging between afforested, undisturbed, or currently under restoration. The Facility stated that "no measurements have yet been taken" to quantify methane emissions of this area at regional scale.
The FAAM aircraft flies within the atmospheric boundary layer over the Flow Country, capturing the downwind gradient in atmospheric methane concentrations.
To keep posted with the latest updates from FAAM visit its Twitter/X page (@faam146) and follow the organisation that manages it called the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (@AtmosScience).
