NASA to Launch Carbon Observatory - NASA Science

Source:  NASA to Launch Carbon Observatory - NASA Science

June 24, 2014:  In the lexicon of climate change, one word appears more often than any other: "carbon." Carbon credits, carbon emissions, carbon sequestration…. These terms are on everyone's lips.

The reason is carbon dioxide (CO2).

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CO2 is the most important driver of global warming. At approximately 400 parts per million, atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least the past 800,000 years. The burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are currently adding nearly 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, producing an unprecedented buildup.

NASA is about to launch a spacecraft to keep track of this greenhouse gas. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is in final preparations for a July 1st launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A new ScienceCast video explores the goals and underlying technology of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.  Play it

Also known as "OCO-2", the polar orbiting satellite will provide a global picture of human and natural sources of carbon dioxide.  Data from OCO-2 will also be used to quantify carbon dioxide "sinks"—that is, places in the ocean and land which naturally pull carbon dioxide out of Earth’s atmosphere for storage.

"Knowing what parts of Earth are helping remove carbon from our atmosphere will help us understand whether they can keep doing so in the future," says Michael Gunson, OCO-2 project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Although the mission is named OCO two, it is actually NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The original OCO spacecraft, launched from Vandenberg more than five years ago, never reached orbit because of a separation anomaly in the launch vehicle. OCO-2 is NASA's second attempt.

It's coming just in time. Greenhouse gases like CO2 trap the sun's heat within Earth's atmosphere. By maintaining habitable temperatures, the greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth. However, increasing CO2 levels may have given our planet too much of a good thing.

Most scientists agree that increased carbon dioxide from human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning and deforestation, has thrown Earth's natural carbon cycle off balance.  Global surface temperatures are increasing and changing our planet's climate.

A blanket around Earth: Learn more about the greenhouse effect

Currently, less than half the carbon dioxide emitted into Earth's atmosphere by human activities stays there. Some of the extra CO2 is absorbed by Earth’s oceans.  Natural land sinks take up the rest, but the amounts of CO2 taken up at various locations on the Earth’s surface are not well understood. OCO-2 scientists hope to coax these sinks out of hiding.

"Quantifying these sinks now will help us predict how fast CO2 will build up in the future," adds Gunson. "Data from this mission will improve the accuracy of global climate change predictions."

OCO-2 detects carbon dioxide using three onboard spectrometers.  These devices work by spreading sunlight into its constituent colors.  CO2 reveals itself by absorbing certain colors as sunlight crosses through the atmosphere.  In this way the new spacecraft will dramatically increase the number of observations of carbon dioxide, collecting hundreds of thousands of measurements each day when the satellite flies over Earth's sunlit hemisphere.

OCO-2 measurements will be combined with data from ground stations, aircraft and other satellites to help answer key questions about carbon dioxide and climate change.

The director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, Michael Freilich, sums it up: "With the OCO-2 mission, NASA will be making an important new contribution to the scientific challenge of better understanding our Earth and its future."

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Web Links:

 

Global Climate Change -- climate.nasa.gov

 

OCO-2 -- mission home page

A Laser Message from Space - NASA Science

Source:   A Laser Message from Space - NASA Science

A Laser Message from Space

June 18, 2014:  Anyone who remembers dialup internet can sympathize with the plight of NASA mission controllers.  Waiting for images to arrive from deep space, slowly downloading line by line, can be a little like the World Wide Web of the 1990s.  Patience is required.

A laser on the International Space Station (ISS) could change all that.  On June 5th, 2014, the ISS passed over the Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California, and beamed an HD video to researchers waiting below.  Unlike normal data transmissions, which are encoded in radio waves, this one came to Earth on a beam of light.

"It was incredible to see this magnificent beam of light arriving from our tiny payload on the space station," says Matt Abrahamson, who manages the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The bright spot in this telescopic image of the ISS is the OPALS laser beam transmitting HD video to Earth. A new ScienceCast video explains how it works.  Play it

Better known as "OPALS," the experimental laser device was launched to the space station onboard a Space-X Dragon spacecraft in the spring of 2014.  Its goal is to explore the possibility of high-bandwidth space communications using light instead of radio waves.  If successful, researchers say OPALS would be like an upgrade from dial-up to DSL, achieving data rates 10 to 1,000 times higher than current space communications.

So far so good.

The entire transmission on June 5th lasted 148 seconds and achieved a maximum data rate of 50 megabits per second. It took OPALS 3.5 seconds to transmit a single copy of the video message, which would have taken more than 10 minutes using traditional downlink methods. The message was sent multiple times during the transmission.

Abrahamson says "the video is an homage to the first output of any standard computer program: 'Hello, World.'"

Click on the image to play the complete "Hello World" video.

Because the space station whips around Earth at 17,500 mph, "laser-tagging" a telescope on the fast-moving ground below can be tricky.  To accomplish the precision tag-up, a laser at the ground station illuminated the station.  OPALS responded by sending its own 2.5 watt encoded laser signal right back in the same direction, carrying the HD video. During the 148-second transmission, OPALS maintained pointing to the ground station within 0.01 degrees while tracking at speeds up to 1 degree per second.

"NASA missions collect an enormous amount of data out in space," says Abrahamson. "Laser communications is a faster alternative for getting those data to the ground."

"With this demonstration, we're paving the way for the future of communications to and from space."

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Web Links:

 

OPALS -- home page at JPL

 

OPALS --information from NASA HQ

El Niño: Is 2014 the new 1997? - NASA Science

Source:  El Niño: Is 2014 the new 1997? - NASA Science

El Niño: Is 2014 the new 1997?

May 19, 2014:  Every ten days, the NASA/French Space Agency Jason-2 satellite maps all the world's oceans, monitoring changes in sea surface height, a measure of heat in the upper layers of the water.   Because our planet is more than 70% ocean, this information is crucial to global forecasts of weather and climate.

Lately, Jason-2 has seen something brewing in the Pacific—and it looks a lot like 1997.

"A pattern of sea surface heights and temperatures has formed that reminds me of the way the Pacific looked in the spring of 1997," says Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "That turned out to be the precursor of a big El Niño."

A new ScienceCast video examines the evidence that an El Niño is developing in the Pacific.  Play it

"We can't yet say for sure that an El Niño will develop in 2014, or how big it might be," cautions Mike McPhaden of NOAA's Pacific Environmental Research Laboratories in Seattle, "but the Jason-2 data support the El Niño Watch issued last month by NOAA."

What Jason-2 has been seeing is a series of "Kelvin waves"—massive ripples in sea level that travel across the Pacific from Australia to South America.  Forecasters are paying close attention because these waves could be a herald of El Niño.

The two phenomena, Kelvin waves and El Niño, are linked by wind. Pacific trade winds blow from east to west, pushing sun-warmed surface waters toward Indonesia.  As a result, the sea level near Indonesia is normally 45 cm higher than it is near Ecuador.  Researchers call that area the “warm pool”—it is the largest reservoir of warm water on our planet.

Sometimes, however, trade winds falter for a few days or weeks, and some of that excess sea level   ripples back toward the Americas. "That's a Kelvin wave," says McPhaden. "It's not unusual to see a couple every winter."

El Niño happens when trade winds falter not just for days, but for many months. Then Kelvin waves    cross the Pacific like a caravan, raising sea level and leaving warmer equatorial waters in their wake.

On May 8th, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction forecasted a 65% chance of El Niño developing during the summer of 2014. More

"The El Niño of 1997/98 was a textbook example," recalls Patzert. "At that time we were getting data from TOPEX/Poseidon, a predecessor of Jason-2.  Sea surface maps showed a whitish bump, indicating a sea level some 10 centimeters higher than usual, moving along the equator from Australia to South America."

"The same pattern is repeating in 2014," says McPhaden. "A series of Kelvin waves generated by localized west wind bursts in the western Pacific that began in mid-January 2014 are headed east. Excitement is building as a third weakening of the Pacific trade winds happened in mid-April."

Ocean and atmospheric scientists at NOAA and NASA are carefully monitoring the Pacific trade winds. The tipping point for declaring a significant El Niño will be an even longer lasting, larger collapse in Pacific trade winds, possibly signaling a shift in weather all around our planet.

"It will become much clearer over the next two to three months whether these recent developments are the forerunner of a major El Niño—or any El Niño at all," says McPhaden.

"Jason-2 is a marvelous Kelvin wave counter," adds Patzert, "and it will tell the tale."

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Web Links:

 

The El Nino Winter of 1997-1998 -- a technical report from tthe National Climatic Data Center

Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth - NASA Science

Source:  Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth - NASA Science

May 2, 2014: Last month (April 8-11), scientists, government officials, emergency planners and others converged on Boulder, Colorado, for NOAA's Space Weather Workshop—an annual gathering to discuss the perils and probabilities of solar storms. 

The current solar cycle is weaker than usual, so you might expect a correspondingly low-key meeting.  On the contrary, the halls and meeting rooms were abuzz with excitement about an intense solar storm that narrowly missed Earth.

"If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado, who presented a talk entitled The Major Solar Eruptive Event in July 2012: Defining Extreme Space Weather Scenarios.  

A new ScienceCast video recounts the near-miss of a solar superstorm in July 2012.  Play it

The close shave happened almost two years ago. On July 23, 2012, a plasma cloud or "CME" rocketed away from the sun as fast as 3000 km/s, more than four times faster than a typical eruption. The storm tore through Earth orbit, but fortunately Earth wasn't there. Instead it hit the STEREO-A spacecraft. Researchers have been analyzing the data ever since, and they have concluded that the storm was one of the strongest in recorded history. "It might have been stronger than the Carrington Event itself," says Baker.

The Carrington Event of Sept. 1859 was a series of powerful CMEs that hit Earth head-on, sparking Northern Lights as far south as Tahiti. Intense geomagnetic storms caused global telegraph lines to spark, setting fire to some telegraph offices and disabling the 'Victorian Internet." A similar storm today could have a catastrophic effect on modern power grids and telecommunication networks. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers fried by such a storm could take years to repair and impact national security.

A recent paper in Nature Communications authored by UC Berkeley space physicist Janet G. Luhmann and former postdoc Ying D. Liu describes what gave the July 2012 storm Carrington-like potency. For one thing, the CME was actually two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes. This double storm cloud traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by another CME only four days earlier. As a result, the CMEs were not decelerated as much as usual by their transit through the interplanetary medium.

A report by the National Academy of Sciences details the consequences of extreme solar storms. More

Had the eruption occurred just one week earlier, the blast site would have been facing Earth, rather than off to the side, so it was a relatively narrow escape.

When the Carrington Event enveloped Earth in the 19thcentury, technologies of the day were hardly sensitive to electromagnetic disturbances.  Modern society, on the other hand, is deeply dependent on sun-sensitive technologies such as GPS, satellite communications and the internet.

"The effect of such a storm on our modern technologies would be tremendous," says Luhmann.

During informal discussions at the workshop, Nat Gopalswamy of the Goddard Space Flight Center noted that "without NASA's STEREO probes, we might never have known the severity of the 2012 superstorm.  This shows the value of having 'space weather buoys' located all around the sun."

It also highlights the potency of the sun even during so-called "quiet times." Many observers have noted that the current solar cycle is weak, perhaps the weakest in 100 years. Clearly, even a weak solar cycle can produce a very strong storm.

Says Baker, "We need to be prepared."

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Web Links:

 

Severe Space Weather: Social and Economic Consequences -- Science@NASA

 

Space Weather Workshop -- home page

Arctic Melt Season Lengthens - NASA Science

Source:  Arctic Melt Season Lengthens - NASA Science

Arctic Melt Season Lengthens

April 1, 2014:  A new study by researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA shows that the length of the melt season for Arctic sea ice is growing by several days each decade. An earlier start to the melt season is allowing the Arctic Ocean to absorb enough additional solar radiation in some places to melt as much as four feet of the Arctic ice cap’s thickness.

"The Arctic is warming and this is causing the melt season to last longer," said Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at NSIDC, Boulder and lead author of the new study, which has been accepted for publication inGeophysical Research Letters. "The lengthening of the melt season is allowing for more of the sun’s energy to get stored in the ocean and increase ice melt during the summer, overall weakening the sea ice cover."

A short video summarizes new findings about Arctic sea ice and warming oceans.  Play it!

Arctic sea ice has been in sharp decline during the last four decades. The sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. The seven lowest September sea ice extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the past seven years.

To study the evolution of sea ice melt onset and freeze-up dates from 1979 to the present day, Stroeve’s team used passive microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus-7 Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer, and the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder carried onboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft. When ice and snow begin to melt, the presence of water causes spikes in the microwave radiation that the snow grains emit, which these sensors can detect.

Results show that although the melt season is lengthening at both ends, with an earlier melt onset in the spring and a later freeze-up in the fall, the predominant phenomenon extending the melting is the later start of the freeze season. Some areas, such as the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, are freezing up between six and 11 days later per decade. Although melt onset variations are smaller, the timing of the beginning of the melt season has a larger impact on the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the ocean, because its timing coincides with when the sun is higher and brighter in the Arctic sky.

Despite large regional variations in the beginning and end of the melt season, the Arctic melt season has lengthened on average by five days per decade from 1979 to 2013.

Visit nasa.gov for more information about this research

Credits:

Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

A Breakthrough in Planet Discoveries - NASA Science

Source:  A Breakthrough in Planet Discoveries - NASA Science

A Breakthrough in Planet Discoveries

Feb. 26, 2014: Years ago, before the launch of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, astronomers were thrilled when they discovered a single planet.

Today, the Kepler team announced 715.

Kepler has always been good at finding planets. Even before the announcement, the observatory had confirmed 246 new worlds outside the solar system. The latest discoveries almost quadruple that number.

A new ScienceCast video explores the 715 new worlds just confirmed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Play it!

Kepler works by looking for the slight dimming of starlight caused when a distant planet transits its parent star.  Any dip in stellar brightness attracts the attention of the Kepler team, and can prompt them to declare a planet candidate. Verification of candidates can be a laborious process, proceeding slowly, planet-by-planet.

Now, however, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer of the Ames Research Center has figured out a way to speed the process up.

"We've developed a procedure to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds," says Lissauer.

The technique is called "verification by multiplicity," which relies in part on the logic of probability. Out of the 160,000 stars Kepler has observed, a few thousand have planet candidates.  But not all candidate systems are equal.  A subset of the total, numbering in the hundreds, have not just one but multiple candidates.  By concentrating on those busy systems, the team found 715 planets orbiting 305 stars.

The method of multiplicity can be likened to the behavior of lions and lionesses. Suppose that Kepler’s stars are like lions, and the planets are lionesses. If you see two big cats it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two cats are gathered, then it is very likely a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity, the lionesses—or planets—can be reliably identified.

Click to visit the Kepler home page.

All of the newly-discovered worlds are located in multi-planet systems. Nearly 95 percent of the planets are smaller than Neptune—that is, less than four times the size of Earth. This is a marked increase in the known number of relatively small planets.

“This study shows us that planets in multi-systems tend to be small and their orbits are flat and circular, much like the inner parts of our own solar system,” says Jason Rowe a co-leader of the research at the SETI Institute.

Four of the new planets are less than two-and-a-half times the size of Earth. Moreover, they orbit in their sun's habitable zone, where the surface temperature of the planets may be suitable for liquid water, a key ingredient for life as we know it.

"The more we explore," concludes Rowe, "the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home."

For more information about the discovery of these and other new worlds, visit PlanetQuest

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

California Drought - NASA Science

Source:  California Drought - NASA Science

California Drought

Feb. 7, 2014:   California is supposed to be the Golden State.  Make that golden brown.

The entire west coast of the United States is changing color as the deepest drought in more than a century unfolds.  According to the US Dept. of Agriculture and NOAA, dry conditions have become extreme across more than 62% of California’s land area—and there is little relief in sight.

"Up and down California, from Oregon to Mexico, it's dry as a bone," comments JPL climatologst Bill Patzert. "To make matters worse, the snowpack in the water-storing Sierras is less than 20% of normal for this time of the year."

A new ScienceCast video asks, is this climate change? The answer is here

The drought is so bad, NASA satellites can see it from space. On Jan. 18th, 2014—just one day after California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency—NASA’s Terra satellite snapped a sobering picture of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  Where thousands of square miles of white snowpack should have been, there was just bare dirt and rock. 

At the Jet Propulsion Lab, a group of researchers led by Tom Painter are preparing to fly a Twin Otter aircraft over the Sierras to investigate the situation.  Their “Airborne Snow Observatory” is equipped with a laser radar and a spectrometer to measure the snow’s depth and reflectivity.  From these data, it is possible to calculate the water content of the Sierras within 5% and future snowmelt rates with similar precision.

“The Airborne Snow Observatory was designed for times like this when we really need to know the state of the snow pack,” says Painter. “Our next flight will be over the Tuolumne River Basin.” The Tuolumne watershed and its Hetch Hetchy Reservoir are the primary water supply for 2.6 million San Francisco Bay Area residents.

For updates, check the US Drought Monitor

The change in scenery is so striking, a group of high school science students in central California have been flying high altitude balloons to photograph it.  From the stratosphere, their home town of Bishop looks like a settlement on the planet Mars: image, movie

"The lack of snow is really striking," says 17-year-old Amelia Koske-Phillips, president of the Earth to Sky Calculusscience club. “I've never seen a winter as brown as this," adds 16-year old Carson Reid, a member of the launch team.

Bill Patzert blames the drought, in part, on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or "PDO," a slowly oscillating pattern of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.  At the moment, the PDO is in its negative phase—a condition historically linked to extreme high-pressure ridges that block West Coast storms and give the Midwest and East Coast punishing winters.

"I’m often asked if this is part of global warming," says Patzert. “My answer is ‘not yet.’ What we’re experiencing now is a natural variability that we’ve seen many times in the past. Ultimately, though, climate change could make western droughts much worse.”

For more information about climate change and other Earth science topics, stay tuned to Science.nasa.gov

Credits:

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Web Links:

All Dry on the Western Front -- Earth Observatory

NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory -- JPL

Earth to Sky Calculus -- a citizen science club that has been photographing the drought from the stratosphere