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On our seventh research flight, we left Punta Arenas, Chile

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and flew to Ascension Island in the middle of the south Atlantic ocean.

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This is often the most stressful flight for the pilots,

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because there are not many places we can divert to. Thankfully, we had pretty good weather this time around

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and we made it without incident. Last time we were in Ascension, in August,

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the air quality was pretty bad. There were fires from Africa,

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influencing everything. This time around, the air quality was actually pretty good;

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we could actually see the ground on our way in. As we left Ascension,

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on our eighth research flight, heading to Lajes in the Azore Islands,

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we saw all the pollution Ascension had seen last time around, but we saw it

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as soon as we left Ascension and for nearly three hours as we were flying north.

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We saw fresh fires from Africa and the concentrations

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in that were huge. There was a mixture of emissions from the fires,

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dust from the Sahara and everything else mixed in together.

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So it made for probably the most exciting chemistry we've seen, as we flew along

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or probably the most depressing, too.