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The Aircraft Operations Center is a Center of the NOAA Marine and Aviation Office. The airplanes of the Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) are flown in support of NOAA's mission to promote global environmental assessment, prediction and stewardship of the Earth's environment. NOAA's aircraft operate throughout the United States and around the world; over open oceans, mountains, coastal wetlands, and Arctic pack ice. These versatile aircraft provide scientists with airborne platforms necessary to collect the environmental and geographic data essential to their research.

NOAA demonstrates a challenging and multi-disciplinary approach to meeting the responsibilities as the "Earth Systems Agency." The Aircraft Operations Center provides capable, mission-ready aircraft and professional crews to the scientific community wherever and whenever they are required. Whether studying global climate change or acid rain, assessing marine mammal populations, surveying coastal erosion, investigating oil spills, flight checking aeronautical charts, or improving hurricane prediction models, the AOC flight crews continue to operate in some of the world's most demanding flight regimes.

The Gulfstream IV-SP Flies for Winter Storms
The NOAA G-IV high-altitude jet will depart for Honolulu on January 16th to serve the scientific interests of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) over the course of the next two months. While conducting the Winter Storms Reconnaissance (WSR-07) project, the aircraft will fly extended patterns over the north Pacific, launching numerous dropwindsonde atmospheric profiling devices to more accurately characterize the environment of developing winter cyclones and snow storms. Data from these expendable instruments will be screened aboard the aircraft by AOC meteorologists, transmitted to NCEP by satellite communication and used to initialize NOAA's most sophisticated forecasting models, to improve warnings of severe weather events. The NOAA G-IV crew will also measure concentrations of ozone on each flight for the Chemical Sciences Division of the Earth System Research Laboratory. <See Daily Updates>
Click here for Feb 16, 07 Press Release
Click here for Feb 20, 07 Press Release

Kermit Braves the Cold ... Ocean Winds Winter Experiment
The Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) has been tasked to provide support for the 2007 Ocean Winds Winter Experiment. Ocean Winds is a continuing project who objective is to improve our understanding of satellite-based ocean wind retrievals in limiting environmental conditions. These include high winds and heavy precipitation. The experiment also seeks to determine how these wind retrievals change across sea surface temperature boundaries. NASA currently has a polar orbiting satellites aloft, QuikSCAT, doing surface wind retrievals, and AOC's WP-3D will be used in a cold weather environment to collect under-flight data with microwave scatterometers that will be used to validate the satellite measurements. The mission of AOC during this program will be to conduct airborne operations as required for the purpose of collecting data required to satisfy the objectives of Ocean Winds Winter. This AOC operations plan will deal with the manner in which it responds to these requirements and the methods used in performing the operation.

In support of this program, the AOC will provide one WP-3D, N42RF (affectionately referred to as 'Kermit'), along with the necessary personnel to operate and maintain both the aircraft and the instrumentation used in the program. The aircraft will fly out of St. John's, Newfoundland Canada for approximately a 1-month period. <See Daily Updates>

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In the Eye of the Storm - Occupational Health & Safety, January 2008
St. Elmo's Fire, with its eerie emanations of iridescent hues, possesses a mystical quality for many. For centures, sailors either sought shelter or stood in awe of it. But for Greg Bast, the phenomenon is just another part of his job. <Read Full Story>