• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Satellites to Study Clouds, Aerosols; Missions to Give New Insight into the Regulation of Earth's Weather, Climate, Air Quality

Posted on: Sunday, 18 September 2005, 06:00 CDT

NASA's putting its head in the clouds to learn more about their effect on Earth's atmosphere and how understanding that process could improve climate predictions.

Once in polar orbit, the CALIPSO and CloudSat satellites will join a team of NASA observational satellites traveling at 17,000 mph to get a 3-D look inside clouds and airborne particles called aerosols. NASA's Langley Research Center is leading the CALIPSO mission.

The $400 million-plus combo package will be launched no earlier than Oct. 26 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, NASA announced yesterday. The satellites could start gathering data in early December and last two to three years.

Their work will help "improve our ability to not only understand the weather but predict climate and human impact in the future," said Donald Anderson, NASA CloudSat-CALIPSO program scientist.

The complementary satellites will peer into thick and thin clouds to investigate how they and aerosols form, evolve and affect water supply, weather, climate and air quality. Scientists are eager for the better view of what's inside.

"Up until now, we've basically just been looking at the tops of clouds," said Langley's David Winker, CALIPSO's principal investigator.

Clouds are one of the least-understood components of the Earth's energy budget, atmospheric scientists say. The largest uncertainty in current climate prediction models is how to correctly account for their effects at trapping or reflecting the sun's energy.

"You see clouds as part of weather every day, but there's information that we don't have that's critical. We can't tell you, for example, how much water and how much ice exists in the clouds that surround our planet," said CloudSat's principal investigator, Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University. "We can't tell you this very basic information that affects the water cycle and the energy cycle of weather and climate systems."

Aerosols are minute particles suspended in the atmosphere that can travel thousands of miles from their source, such as car exhaust or forest fires, Winker said. Aerosols can either scatter sunlight back into space to cool Earth's atmosphere or absorb sunlight and warm the atmosphere.

"We need better information on where they come from and where they go when they're in the atmosphere," Winker said.

CALIPSO, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellite, will use its laser and visual and infrared cameras to spot where the aerosols in clouds occur in the atmosphere. The joint project includes the French space agency and collaborators at Virginia's Hampton University and should last about three years.

CloudSat uses radar to study cloud properties and can distinguish between cloud particles and precipitation. Its mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

More News in this Category