Barents Sea operational centre - Andenes
The operation centre will be located at Andøya Rocket Range (Andenes, Andøya 69°N, 16°E), where scientists will have access to high-speed Internet connections and radiolinks to weather briefings from met.no's operational centres in Tromsø and in Oslo. The DLR-Falcon and the NOAA P-3 (if available) will be located at this site, which has a very long runway and little commercial air traffic.
Board of Operations (BO)
The PIs in the project will be invited to participate at a Board of Operations (BO) which will direct the operational activity. The BO will be located at Andenes with radio-link to other locations.
Special Observing Period (SOP)
The Special Observation Period is February-March 2008. In this period existing observational sites will increase the frequency of recordings, and operational forecast models with enhanced resolution will be run. In advance of the SOP, all the mobile units will be prepared, and the LAMEPS-product (cfr. WP5) will have been used by the forecasters for a while, so that they are familiar with its potential in their briefing of the experimentalists planning the actual flights and on-demand observations.
Intensive Observational Period (IOP)
Within the SOP, a number of IOPs will be issued. Based on the decisions from the BO, IOPalerts will be issued 2-3 days ahead. Final decisions on the IOP-issues will be taken 12-24 hours ahead. Radiosonde units along with other units (ships, etc.) will be alerted by the BOcrew. The details concerning the final operational activity (flight plans and radiosonde launching times) will be prepared within a few hours before execution.