a spacex falcon 9 rocket will soon be
taking
a historic u.s european satellite into
orbit
and the data from this mission could be
a game changer in capturing the most
accurate data yet on how
human-caused climate change has affected
rcs
an important scientific question that we
have is the separation of natural
sea level change versus anthropogenic
there's been a number of papers that
have come out that have discussed the
emergence of that
forced or anthropogenic signal in the
altimeter data
that's still up for some debate so with
this longer record we're going to be
able to
better understand and provide a better
view of what
long-term sea level rise might be and
how it's expressed in
satellite data
for nearly 30 years a host of u.s
european satellites have been working
together to gather climate data which
has been
instrumental in tracking big changes in
climate phenomena
like el nino or monitoring ocean
features like the gulf stream
but these satellites couldn't capture
the tiny changes in these environments
and this is where sentinel 6 mission
comes in it's part of the eu's
copernicus program the world's largest
earth monitoring system
which has worked to measure the
environment and the role human-caused
climate change is having on it
the mission is made up of two identical
satellites
sentinel 6 michael freilick which takes
off in november 2020
and sentinel 6b that launches in 2025.
it's an international effort between
nasa the european space agency
national oceanic and atmospheric
administration the european organization
for the exploitation of meteorological
satellites
and france's national center for space
studies
during its roughly five and a half year
endeavor the satellite will map more
than
90 of our oceans down to a few
centimeters every 10 days
these measurements will be of high
resolution sea level variations
the mission will also monitor
atmospheric temperature and humidity
which will improve weather forecasts
so the longer the record the better
chance we have of separating out the
different processes
and the contributions of those processes
to sea level one focus area for
satellite sentinel 6 michael freilich
will be coastal cities and the risk of
flooding
because based on current estimates
places like the southern tip of
manhattan could flood between
20 to 40 times a year by the 2030s and
that rate of flooding could more than
double that by 2100 so having precise
uninterrupted data is crucial especially
since global sea levels
on average have risen by 3.2 millimeters
per year since the 1990s
and i know it's just three millimeters
that's tiny
how can that have such a big effect well
turns out
an annual three millimeter sea level
rise is
huge if we look at one millimeter of sea
level rise
globally it's about 100 trillion gallons
of water for one millimeter of sea level
rise
so if you adjust that then we have about
300 trillion gallons of water
that increases from year to year so it's
really an incredible amount of water
that we're talking about
so to gather this crucial data the
spacecraft has a suite of next
generation instruments
starting with its radar altimeter which
will measure sea surface properties like
wave height
and wind speeds the altimeter will work
in tandem with a microwave radiometer
to account for the water vapor's levels
while those tools will focus on
capturing sea level data
another instrument will focus on
recording tiny changes in earth's
atmosphere
using a technique called radio
occultation it will collect data on
global temperature
and humidity rates and finally the last
three instruments will help to exactly
locate the spacecraft in orbit
one of the major and most exciting
improvements from the past missions is
the reduced latency
and data delivery times of the altimeter
data it's expected to be accessible
within three hours of collection
providing some near real-time
applications
so what can we expect on launch day the
sentinel 6 michael frylick will hitch a
ride on spacex's falcon 9 rocket from
vandenberg air force base in california
in november 2020
from there the rocket will make its way
into orbit and release the satellite at
an altitude of about 1300 kilometers
where it will begin its journey to help
us in better understanding our changing
world
that's happening now so a lot of times
we think about sea level rise and
coastal flooding as a future problem but
for coastlines around the world we're
already seeing
the effects of sea level rise so it's a
now problem it's not
really a future problem so it's critical
that we we make steps to improve our
scientific understanding and
certainly the satellite specific role in
that for more rocket launches
check out our countdown to launch series
here and if there are any other launches
that you'd like to see us cover
let us know in the comments below thanks
for watching and i'll see you next time