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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed wildfire smoke from Nova Scotia billowing over the Atlantic Ocean in May 2023. Warm weather and lack of rain fueled blazes across Canada last year, burning 5% of the country’s forests.NASA Extreme wildfires like these will continue to have a large impact on global climate.
Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon, NASA scientists have found. That’s comparable in magnitude to the annual fossil fuel emissions of a large industrialized nation. NASA funded the study as part of its ongoing mission to understand our changing planet.
The research team used satellite observations and advanced computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota from May to September 2023. The new study, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, was led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
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Carbon monoxide from Canada wildfires curls thousands of miles across North America in this animation showing data from summer 2023. Lower concentrations are shown in purple; higher concentrations are in yellow. Red triangles indicate fire hotspots.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center They found that the Canadian fires released more carbon in five months than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022 (about 480 million and 291 million metric tons, respectively). While the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from both wildfires and fossil fuel combustion cause extra warming immediately, there’s an important distinction, the scientists noted. As the forest regrows, the amount of carbon emitted from fires will be reabsorbed by Earth’s ecosystems. The CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is not readily offset by any natural processes.
An ESA (European Space Agency) instrument designed to measure air pollution observed the fire plumes over Canada. The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument, or TROPOMI, flies aboard the Sentinel 5P satellite, which has been orbiting Earth since 2017. TROPOMI has four spectrometers that measure and map trace gases and fine particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere.
The scientists started with the end result of the fires: the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere during the fire season. Then they “back-calculated” how large the emissions must have been to produce that amount of CO. They were able to estimate how much CO2 was released based on ratios between the two gases in the fire plumes.
“What we found was that the fire emissions were bigger than anything in the record for Canada,” said Brendan Byrne, a JPL scientist and lead author of the new study. “We wanted to understand why.”
Warmest Conditions Since at Least 1980
Wildfire is essential to the health of forests, clearing undergrowth and brush and making way for new plant life. In recent decades, however, the number, severity, and overall size of wildfires have increased, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Contributing factors include extended drought, past fire management strategies, invasive species, and the spread of residential communities into formerly less developed areas.
To explain why Canada’s fire season was so intense in 2023, the authors of the new study cited tinderbox conditions across its forests. Climate data revealed the warmest and driest fire season since at least 1980. Temperatures in the northwest part of the country — where 61% of fire emissions occurred — were more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.6 degrees Celsius) above average from May through September. Precipitation was also more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) below average for much of the year.
Driven in large part by these conditions, many of the fires grew to enormous sizes. The fires were also unusually widespread, charring some 18 million hectares of forest from British Columbia in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east. The area of land that burned was more than eight times the 40-year average and accounted for 5% of Canadian forests.
“Some climate models project that the temperatures we experienced last year will become the norm by the 2050s,” Byrne said. “The warming, coupled with lack of moisture, is likely to trigger fire activity in the future.”
If events like the 2023 Canadian forest fires become more typical, they could impact global climate. That’s because Canada’s vast forests compose one of the planet’s important carbon sinks, meaning that they absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than they release. The scientists said that it remains to be seen whether Canadian forests will continue to absorb carbon at a rapid rate or whether increasing fire activity could offset some of the uptake, diminishing the forests’ capacity to forestall climate warming.
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Written by Sally Younger
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
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3 min read Eclipse Soundscapes AudioMoth Donations Will Study Nature at Night
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Learn Home Eclipse Soundscapes AudioMoth… Audio Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Stories Science Activation Highlights Citizen Science 3 min read
Eclipse Soundscapes AudioMoth Donations Will Study Nature at Night
During the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, approximately 770 AudioMoth recording devices were used to capture sound data as part of the Eclipse Soundscapes Project — a multisensory participatory science (also known as “citizen science”) project that is studying how eclipses impact life on Earth. Following the eclipse, participants had the option to keep or send back their AudioMoth device for donation. Fifty-two AudioMoths were sent back to Eclipse Soundscapes (ES) so that ES could donate them to projects or communities for future scientific usage. Eighteen of those AudioMoths have been donated to Dark Sky Missouri, an initiative to protect our night skies and the creatures that depend on them. On Wednesday, August 21, 2024, at 3 p.m. EST, Eclipse Soundscapes hosted a webinar with Dark Sky Missouri founder Don Ficken to learn more about how these AudioMoths will contribute to future participatory science.
Don Ficken is a Missouri Master Naturalist and amateur astronomer who found the Eclipse Soundscapes Project through SciStarter, an organization that helps bring together millions of curious and concerned people in the world to engage in real-world research questions through citizen science. He participated as a Data Collector in 2024. “[The Eclipse Soundscapes Project] opened up a door for me because I never really thought about sound acoustics in this way,” Ficken said.
It occurred to Ficken that acoustics could help bolster Dark Sky Missouri’s efforts to study and conserve night time wildlife. One of these efforts, Lights Out Heartland, encourages homeowners and businesses to minimize artificial light usage in order to protect migrating birds from collisions due to disorienting bright lights. Ficken hopes to use the AudioMoths to capture the birds’ nocturnal flight calls as they fly over locations like the Gateway Arch, Shaw Nature Reserve, and Missouri Botanical Gardens.
Dark Sky Missouri also hopes to take more general surveys of nature at night by placing AudioMoths in parks and natural areas. Even though parks are not typically open or staffed at night, the AudioMoths could help map the locations and movements of wildlife, creating talking points and learning opportunities for staff and visitors alike.
Both initiatives will be piloted during the fall bird migration, with the goal of developing a framework for an expanded long term project. While there are no opportunities for the general public to get involved in the projects just yet, Ficken says participatory scientists can benefit from the multisensory methods employed in the Eclipse Soundscapes Project. “I think that the thing that they should think about is really the door that acoustics would be opening for them,” he said. “In other words, you don’t have to just visually look at daytime. Think about sound. Think about night.” For more information on how Dark Sky Missouri will use the AudioMoth recorders, read the Eclipse Soundscapes blog post.
The Eclipse Soundscapes Project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0008 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Dark Sky Missouri will use the donated Eclipse Soundscapes AudioMoths to study bird calls and behavior at night. Share
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This view of Jupiter was captured by the JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s 62nd close flyby of the giant planet on June 13. Citizen scientist Jackie Branc made the image using raw JunoCam data.Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Jackie Branc (CC BY) Using data from the Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC) star tracker cameras aboard NASA’s Juno, this graphic shows the mission’s model for radiation intensity at different points in the spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter.NASA/JPL-Caltech/DTU Using cameras designed for navigation, scientists count ‘fireflies’ to determine the amount of radiation the spacecraft receives during each orbit of Jupiter.
Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission have developed the first complete 3D radiation map of the Jupiter system. Along with characterizing the intensity of the high-energy particles near the orbit of the icy moon Europa, the map shows how the radiation environment is sculpted by the smaller moons orbiting near Jupiter’s rings.
The work relies on data collected by Juno’s Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC), which was designed and built by the Technical University of Denmark, and the spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), which was built by Leonardo SpA in Florence, Italy. The two datasets complement each other, helping Juno scientists characterize the radiation environment at different energies.
Both the ASC and SRU are low-light cameras designed to assist with deep-space navigation. These types of instruments are on almost all spacecraft. But to get them to operate as radiation detectors, Juno’s science team had to look at the cameras in a whole new light.
“On Juno we try to innovate new ways to use our sensors to learn about nature, and we have used many of our science instruments in ways they were not designed for,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “This is the first detailed radiation map of the region at these higher energies, which is a major step in understanding how Jupiter’s radiation environment works. This will help planning observations for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system.”
Counting Fireflies
Consisting of four star cameras on the spacecraft’s magnetometer boom, Juno’s ASC takes images of stars to determine the spacecraft’s orientation in space, which is vital to the success of the mission’s magnetic field experiment. But the instrument has also proved to be a valuable detector of high-energy particle fluxes in Jupiter’s magnetosphere. The cameras record “hard radiation,” or ionizing radiation that impacts a spacecraft with sufficient energy to pass through the ASC’s shielding.
“Every quarter-second, the ASC takes an image of the stars,” said Juno scientist John Leif Jørgensen of the Technical University of Denmark. “Very energetic electrons that penetrate its shielding leave a telltale signature in our images that looks like the trail of a firefly. The instrument is programmed to count the number of these fireflies, giving us an accurate calculation of the amount of radiation.”
Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022.Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Björn Jónsson (CC BY 3.0) Because of Juno’s ever-changing orbit, the spacecraft has traversed practically all regions of space near Jupiter.
ASC data suggests that there is more very high-energy radiation relative to lower-energy radiation near Europa’s orbit than previously thought. The data also confirms that there are more high-energy electrons on the side of Europa facing its orbital direction of motion than on the moon’s trailing side. This is because most of the electrons in Jupiter’s magnetosphere overtake Europa from behind due to the planet’s rotation, whereas the very high-energy electrons drift backward, almost like fish swimming upstream, and slam into Europa’s front side.
Jovian radiation data is not the ASC’s first scientific contribution to the mission. Even before arriving at Jupiter, ASC data was used to determine a measurement of interstellar dust impacting Juno. The imager also discovered a previously uncharted comet using the same dust-detection technique, distinguishing small bits of the spacecraft ejected by microscopic dust impacting Juno at a high velocity.
Dust Rings
Like Juno’s ASC, the SRU has been used as a radiation detector and a low-light imager. Data from both instruments indicates that, like Europa, the small “shepherd moons” that orbit within or close to the edge of Jupiter’s rings (and help to hold the shape of the rings) also appear to interact with the planet’s radiation environment. When the spacecraft flies on magnetic field lines connected to ring moons or dense dust, the radiation count on both the ASC and SRU drops precipitously. The SRU is also collecting rare low-light images of the rings from Juno’s unique vantage point.
“There is still a lot of mystery about how Jupiter’s rings were formed, and very few images have been collected by prior spacecraft,” said Heidi Becker, lead co-investigator for the SRU and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “Sometimes we’re lucky and one of the small shepherd moons can be captured in the shot. These images allow us to learn more precisely where the ring moons are currently located and see the distribution of dust relative to their distance from Jupiter.”
More About the Mission
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Technical University of Denmark designed and built the Advanced Stellar Compass. The Stellar Reference Unit was built by Leonardo SpA in Florence, Italy. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
More information about Juno is available at:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
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DC Agle
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agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
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karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
Simon Koefoed Toft
Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen
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Deb Schmid
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
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Last Updated Aug 20, 2024 Related Terms
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By Jessica Barnett
From Earth, one might be tempted to view the Sun as a unique celestial object like no other, as it’s the star our home planet orbits and the one our planet relies on most for heat and light. But if you took a step back and compared the Sun to the other stars NASA has studied over the years, how would it compare? Would it still be so unique?
The Full-sun Ultraviolet Rocket SpecTrograph (FURST) aims to answer those questions when it launches aboard a Black Brant IX sounding rocket Aug. 11 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
“When we talk about ‘Sun as a star’, we’re treating it like any other star in the night sky as opposed to the unique object we rely on for human life. It’s so exciting to study the Sun from that vantage point,” said Adam Kobelski, institutional principal investigator for FURST and a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The Full-sun Ultraviolet Rocket SpecTrograph (FURST) undergoes testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in preparation for launch on Aug. 11. FURST will be launched aboard a Black Bryant IX sounding rocket and will observe the Sun in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV). The instrument was designed and built at Montana State University. NASA Marshall provided the camera, supplied avionics, and designed and built its calibration system. Credit: Montana State University FURST will obtain the first high-resolution spectra of the “Sun as a star” in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV), a light wavelength that is absorbed in Earth’s atmosphere meaning it can only be observed from space. Astronomers have studied other stars in the vacuum ultraviolet with orbiting telescopes, however these instruments are too sensitive to be pointed to the Sun. The recent advancements in high-resolution VUV spectroscopy now allow for the same observations of our own star, the Sun.
“These are wavelengths that Hubble Space Telescope is really great at observing, so there is a decent amount of Hubble observations of stars in ultraviolet wavelengths, but we don’t have comparable observations of our star in this wavelength range,” said Kobelski. Marshall was the lead field center for the design, development, and construction of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Because Hubble is too sensitive to point at Earth’s Sun, new instruments were needed to get a spectrum of the entire Sun that is of a similar quality to Hubble’s observations of other stars. Marshall built the camera, supplied avionics, and designed and built a new calibration system for the FURST mission. Montana State University (MSU), which leads the FURST mission in partnership with Marshall, built the optical system, which includes seven optics that will feed into the camera that will essentially create seven exposures, covering the entire ultraviolet wavelength range.
Charles Kankelborg, a heliophysics professor at MSU and principal investigator for FURST, described the mission as a very close collaboration with wide-ranging implications.
“Our mission will obtain the first far ultraviolent spectrum of the Sun as a star,” Kankelborg said. “This is a key piece of information that has been missing for decades. With it, we will place the Sun in context with other stars.”
Kobelski echoed the sentiment.
“How well do the observations and what we know about our Sun compare to our observations or what we know of other stars?” Kobelski said. “You’d expect that we know all this information about the Sun – it’s right there – but it turns out, we actually don’t. If we can get these same observations or same wavelengths as we’ve observed from these other sources, we can start to connect the dots and connect our Sun to other stars.”
Montana State University alumnus Jake Davis, left, Professor Charles Kankelborg, and doctoral students Catharine “Cappy” Bunn and Suman Panda, pose at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where they are preparing for the launch of the FURST rocket mission to observe the sun in far ultraviolet.Credit: Montana State University FURST will be the third launch led by Marshall for NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program within five months, making 2024 an active year for the program. Like the Hi-C Flare mission that launched in April, the sounding rocket will launch and open during flight to allow FURST to observe the Sun for approximately five minutes before closing and falling back to Earth’s surface. Marshall team members will be able to calibrate the instruments during launch and flight, as well as retrieve data during flight and soon after landing.
Kobelski and Kankelborg each said they’re grateful for the opportunity to fill the gaps in our knowledge of Earth’s Sun.
The launch will be livestreamed on Sunday, Aug. 11, with a launch window of 11:40 a.m.– 12:40 p.m. CDT. Tune in on NASA’s White Sands Test Facility Launch Channel.
The FURST mission is led by Marshall in partnership with Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, with additional support from the NASA’s Sounding Rockets Office and the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research’s High Altitude Observatory. Launch support is provided at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico by NASA’s Johnson Space Center. NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program is managed by the agency’s Heliophysics Division.
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 09, 2024 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Warming global climate is changing the vegetation structure of forests in the far north. It’s a trend that will continue at least through the end of this century, according to NASA researchers. The change in forest structure could absorb more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, or increase permafrost thawing, resulting in the release of ancient carbon. Millions of data points from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) and Landsat missions helped inform this latest research, which will be used to refine climate forecasting computer models.
Landscape at Murphy Dome fire scar, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Katie Jepson Tundra landscapes are getting taller and greener. With the warming climate, the vegetation of forests in the far north is changing as more trees and shrubs appear. These shifts in the vegetation structure of boreal forests and tundra will continue for at least the next 80 years, according to NASA scientists in a recently published study.
Boreal forests generally grow between 50 and 60 degrees north latitude, covering large parts of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia. The biome is home to evergreens such as pine, spruce, and fir. Farther north, the permafrost and short growing season of the tundra biome have historically made it hard to support large trees or dense forests. The vegetation in those regions has instead been made up of shrubs, mosses, and grasses.
The boundary between the two biomes is difficult to discern. Previous studies have found high-latitude plant growth increasing and moving northward into areas that earlier were sparsely covered in the shrubs and grasses of the tundra. Now, the new NASA-led study finds an increased presence of trees and shrubs in those tundra regions and adjacent transitional forests, where boreal regions and tundra meet. This is predicted to continue until at least the end of the century.
Data from the study depicted on a map of Alaska and Northern Canada highlighting the change in tree canopy cover extending into transitional landscapes. In boreal North America, the largest increases in canopy cover (dark green) have occurred in transitional tundra landscapes. These landscapes are found along the cold, northern extent of the study area and have historically supported mostly shrubs, mosses, and grasses. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Wanmei Liang “The results from this study advance a growing body of work that recognizes a shift in vegetation patterns within the boreal forest biome,” said Paul Montesano, lead author for the paper and research scientist at NASA Goddard’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’ve used satellite data to track the increased vegetation growth in this biome since 1984, and we found that it’s similar to what computer models predict for the decades to come. This paints a picture of continued change for the next 80 or so years that is particularly strong in transitional forests.”
Scientists found predictions of “positive median height changes” in all tundra landscapes and transitional – between boreal and tundra – forests featured in this study. This suggests trees and shrubs will be both larger and more abundant in areas where they are currently sparse.
“The increase of vegetation that corresponds with the shift can potentially offset some of the impact of rising CO2 emissions by absorbing more CO2 through photosynthesis,” said study co-author Chris Neigh, NASA’s Landsat 8 and 9 project scientist at Goddard. Carbon absorbed through this process would then be stored in the trees, shrubs, and soil.
The change in forest structure may also cause permafrost areas to thaw as more sunlight is absorbed by the darker colored vegetation. This could release CO2 and methane that has been stored in the soil for thousands of years.
In their paper published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment in May, NASA scientists described the mixture of satellite data, machine learning, climate variables, and climate models they used to model and predict how the forest structure will look for years to come. Specifically, they analyzed nearly 20 million data points from NASA’s ICESat-2. They then matched these data points with tens of thousands of scenes of North American boreal forests between 1984 to 2020 from Landsat, a joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Advanced computing capabilities are required to create models with such large quantities of data, which are called “big data” projects.
Flight over the boreal landscapes of Fairbanks, Alaska, during the ABoVE field campaign in August 2022. Credit: NASA/Sofie Bates The ICESat-2 mission uses a laser instrument called lidar to measure the height of Earth’s surface features (like ice sheets or trees) from the vantage point of space. In the study, the authors examined these measurements of vegetation height in the far north to understand what the current boreal forest structure looks like. Scientists then modeled several future climate scenarios — adjusting to different scenarios for temperature and precipitation — to show what forest structure may look like in response.
“Our climate is changing and, as it changes, it affects almost everything in nature,” said Melanie Frost, remote sensing scientist at NASA Goddard. “It’s important for scientists to understand how things are changing and use that knowledge to inform our climate models.”
By Erica McNamee
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 06, 2024 EditorKate D. RamsayerContactErica McNameeerica.s.mcnamee@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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