Welcome to Earth Expeditions
our time to tell you about all these fantastic
Hey Tom!
What do you think?
I like it!
I'm ready to
go to the Great Barrier Reef.
Me too I got my snorkel!
Guys we're not going to the Great Barrier Reef.
You said we're going in the ocean this week!
I said we need more emotion
I thought you said grab your wetsuit we're gonna go study coral reefs
in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Alright I guess we're stuck here again.
Yeah! We're back in the studio.
We'lll still tell you that all the really cool
research that's happening in the Great
Barrier Reef, southern Africa and
Greenland through our technology like
video cameras.
Welcome to Earth Expeditions
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At NASA we know our world is changing
and we're on it in the field up in the
sky in the ocean and on-the-ground
basically all around. From the Great
Barrier Reef to the clouds above Africa
to the receding glaciers of Greenland.
NASA Earth scientists are collecting the
data to help us understand how the world
is an interconnected system and how we
can improve our lives.
produces almost a third of the world's
vegetative burning would send smoke
particles up into the atmosphere where
they eventually mix with stratocumulus
clouds over southeastern Atlantic Ocean
our team observations of clouds above
aerosols and their interactions or
ORACLES as we call them is checking out
clouds above Africa with some pretty amazing aircraft.
My name is Jens Redemann I'm the principal investigator
for the ORACLES project and I work for
the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett
Field California the ORACLES mission
is a five-year project in which we're
going to fly two research aircraft in 2016
and one research aircraft in 2017 and 18
- each from Namibia to study the
interaction of biomass burning emissions
and low-level clouds over the southeast
Atlantic. There's a long list of reasons
why we're working here in Namibia.
The ER-2 aircraft that you see behind me
actually requires a very long runway and
a large hangar so that the instruments
can be opened up and properly maintained
after each one of their flights
it's also the only access point to the
southeast Atlantic really from which we
can fly and reach far into the southeast
Atlantic basin. So we're studying a very
unique system the low-level cumulus
clouds are not unique to the southeast
Atlantic but the fact that they're
coexisting with biomass burning
emissions at altitude is very unique to
the southeast Atlantic and gives us the
opportunity to study the interactions of aerosol particles with these clouds.
And these interactions actually are some
of the largest remaining uncertainties
in how humans effect climate.
We think that the data is useful in two ways first off
there really no observations of these
aerosol particles in the southeast
Atlantic because they usually over late
he's very bright clouds and the
satellite information that we gather
don't quite give us all the details that
we need in order to study their effects.
The other thing is that these effects
and interactions between aerosol
particles and cloud particles really go
on globally and climate modelers
struggle mightily with with
parameterizing them and putting them
into their global climate models so
implicitly we hope to have an impact on
on the predictions of future
anthropogenic impact on climate the
Namibia has been most welcoming we
have been welcomed with open arms
the infrastructure is terrific the
airport has been recently renovated and
gives us a perfect infrastructure really
but it's really good
the welcoming by by the University and
and research types in the country that
has has has made this little bit special.
We're very excited to be here pulling
off a research effort halfway around the
world is always difficult and we haven't
been able to do it with a lot of support
from the Namibian government entities and
a lot of local researchers and and
support and we couldn't be more excited
to be here.
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The ORACLES mission is going after one of the most important
questions and understanding the Earth's
climate system which is how to stuff we
burn effect how clouds form.
Yeah and it's
really cool because in these like
intricate missions you have so many team
members who put in so much effort to
make it happen
yeah like most people think oh it's just
a bunch of scientists right but you've
got everything for mechanics that
keeping the plane flying to the
technicians tweak and all the
instruments
although even through the people who are
doing things like getting the data
together and putting it up on the web
yeah and then you also have science
writers like me and then you have your
copy editors
like you're saying your IT specialist is all
this information we have to make it
understandable for the public and then
you also have the people have to take
care of the people in the field with my
accommodation, and the food, and the
toilet paper and everything that they need.
Yeah, it's a big team and you got to
take care of it is and actually uh one
of my favorite team members doesn't have a pulse
it's actually the coral missions G-IV.
So let's go check in and fly like G-IV!
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Like we said before NASA Airborne
Science is all over the world and we've
got a mission continuing in the frozen north
checking out the melting glaciers of
Greenland, flying out of Keflavik Iceland.
Team OMG.
I'm Josh Willis, I'm a climate scientist at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and right now i'm in
Keflavík, Iceland in front of the
Gulfstream Three, which we're using to conduct
a survey for Oceans Melting Greenland.
We have a series of points laid out where
we would like to collect data and find
large we fly over those points and drop
when we're right above them
however in some places where ice or
clouds are a factor we relocate our
points in order to find open water
that's clear where we know we're not
dropping on top of a ship or anything
and we're able to drop through an area
without sea ice. So in fact when we have
to change quickly because there's sea
ice conditions or clouds in our drop point.
We look out the window and look for
places where we see clear open water and
clear skies just above it and we drop in
those so the team is sometimes targeting
in real time trying to find places that
are close to our original plan drops but
not quite there
we've set up for different primary
locations for collecting the
observations for OMG because of the
range of the aircraft and the way the
survey plans spreads out the ocean
measurements we really have to operate
out of bases that are nearby and collect
data that is not too long a trip for the
plane if we spend a lot of fuel flying
out and flying back then that means we
have less fuel to actually drop the
probes and collect data. So we've partition
Greenland essentially into four pieces
north and south and east and west we began by surveying the southwest
part of Greenland and we operated out of
Kangerlussuaq walk we also dropped some
probes on the way over when we flew from
Bangor, Maine to Kangerlussuaq.
So we flew from Bangor to Kanger.
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So the Kangerlussuaq was a very
interesting place but we were able to
operate out of there for several days
and really complete a large chunk of the
southwest part of the survey dropping
several dozen probes over the course of
three or four days after picking up
about probes from Thule we flew to
Svalbard, Norway a small island off the
northeast coast of Greenland from there
we were able to complete the northeast
part of the survey at least the parts
that weren't covered with ice and then
flying across the northern edge of
Greenland and surveying along the
northern coast of Greenland on our way
back to Thule. We spent several days in
Thule completing the northwest part of
the survey before yesterday flying right
across the Greenland ice sheet to
Iceland and landing here in Keflavik.
We've sent out a very ambitious plan
here with the goal of dropping
250 probes in about a month
we're a little over halfway right now
we've dropped we have a hundred left
to go and about two weeks left to do it
in so we're definitely beginning to feel
the time crunch but i'm confident that
we can have a really excellent survey
with just a number of good weather days
if we can get them.
Hey Tom and Kasha I hope you enjoyed this
little tour of Oceans Melting Greenland.
I'm Josh Willis. OMG back to you guys
Hey thanks Josh! Those guy's got to see
some pretty amazing stuff huh?
Yeah and it inspired us to come outside and it's not
exactly Greenland but
still pretty beautiful. Yeah but you know
it's also a good example imagine come to
a place like this with like a team of
two dozen scientists and an airplane.
I can't, and then you have all these things that
you can't control like the weather or
like your engine fails or something like.
Yeah like science sometimes is just
like an exercise and just keep trying
keep fixing and keep moving on.
Perseverance.
Hey, well that's all for us today. We hope
you enjoyed this episode of Earth Expeditions!
And go outside and create
your own earth expedition
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