by Just in time for Earth Day, NASA has announced that it is full speed ahead with six new spacecraft missions to study our changing planet.
In a media briefing Friday (April 19), NASA officials announced six new airborne missions that will focus on changing arctic coastlines, weather created by wildfires, urban air pollution, the impacts of changing weather patterns on landscapes, retreat. glacier and agriculture.
In total, NASA will spend about $120 million on the six missions, which will be deployed from 2026 to 2029.
Related: Climate change: Causes and effects
“A lot of what we do uses that unique vantage point to see the whole world, but we do science at different levels, including from aircraft, and that gives us the ability to see detailed studies to understand how phenomena are functioning and how the phenomena work. World operating at the local scale,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, during the briefing.
“A series of six very different airborne campaigns will give us some really focused insights to help with everything from how we understand how the Earth works to how we put that science into action for people,” she said.
Here is a summary of the newly announced projects:
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Arctic coastal change: City College, New York will lead this mission to study how a warming climate and changes in weather patterns are changing river systems along Alaska’s North Slope. This will include observations from aircraft, boats and drones.
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Creating wildfire weather: The Naval Research Laboratory will lead this mission across the Western United States and Canada to learn more about how the rising temperatures from wildfires can create their own weather, with their includes the formation of pyrocumulonimbus clouds.
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Urban air pollution: This mission will be led by NASA’s Langley Research Center and will focus, on a very small scale, on how pollutants affect human health and determine the best ways to improve air pollution forecasts. This study will focus on locations throughout North America, as well as Mexico City.
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Changing weather patterns and impacts on the landscape: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will lead “Discovering Weather, Shifting Lands” and focus on how major weather events such as droughts, floods, mudslides and landslides change the shape of the Earth.
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Glacier retreat: This project will be run by the University of Arizona, which will examine the retreat of glaciers and ice sheets in Alaska, Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. This will help predict their movement and help researchers better understand the changes in flow and retreat.
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Agriculture: Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will focus specifically on farmland and observe the flows greenhouse effect gases and emissions and absorption.
“What’s important about it is, we’re going to build on what we already do at NASA with innovation and collaboration so we can help users get the right data they need at the right time,” Thomas Wagner, director NASA’s associate for the Earth Action Program, said during the briefing. “The most important thing about this right now is that we are at a critical time. There are challenges associated with climate change, but at the same time we have our 25 NASA missions in orbit, our international partners and the commercial data as well. So we had this unprecedented view of Earth.”
Another important component of NASA’s climate research is the new Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite, which which was launched into orbit last February. Some of the first data have recently been released, allowing researchers to study some of the smallest organisms on our planet, phytoplankton.
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PACE will enable researchers to learn more about the microscopic life in our oceans, as well as the different types of particles in the air. Scientists will also gain a better understanding of our changing climate and address concerns about fisheries health, toxic algae blooms, wildfire smoke and air pollution.
“We went back and watched one of the NASA videos from the early ’70s about what the Earth observation systems were going to look like, and it’s amazing that we’ve really taken it. And over that time, we’ve gone from taking pictures of Earth to try to understand it to starting to make these basic measurements in the ’90s,” Wagner said.
“Today, with all the missions, we have data that covers all different areas of science from deep in the Earth to the top of the atmosphere, and we have the tools to interpret that and figure out what it really means,” he said. he. “People can use this data in their everyday lives to solve problems, so it’s just a really exciting time to be in this field and think about where it’s going to go next.”
NASA encourages everyone to celebrate Earth Day today (April 22). You can check out the US government World Information Center and take part in the #GlobalSelfie campaign, which is focused on the theme”The Earth touches everything.“
