Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
4 Min Read Eclipses Create Atmospheric Gravity Waves, NASA Student Teams Confirm
In this photo taken from the International Space Station, the Moon passes in front of the Sun casting its shadow, or umbra, and darkening a portion of the Earth's surface above Texas during the annular solar eclipse Oct. 14, 2023. Credits: NASA Student teams from three U.S. universities became the first to measure what scientists have long predicted: eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. The waves’ telltale signature emerged in data captured during the North American annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) sponsored by NASA.
Through NEBP, high school and university student teams were stationed along the eclipse path through multiple U.S. states, where they released weather balloons carrying instrument packages designed to conduct engineering studies or atmospheric science. A cluster of science teams located in New Mexico collected the data definitively linking the eclipse to the formation of atmospheric gravity waves, a finding that could lead to improved weather forecasting.
“Climate models are complicated, and they make some assumptions about what atmospheric factors to take into account.”
Angela Des Jardins
Director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium, which led NEBP.
“Understanding how the atmosphere reacts in the special case of eclipses helps us better understand the atmosphere, which in turn helps us make more accurate weather predictions and, ultimately, better understand climate change.”
Catching Waves in New Mexico
Previous ballooning teams also had hunted atmospheric gravity waves during earlier eclipses, research that was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, an NEBP team stationed in Chile collected promising data, but hourly balloon releases didn’t provide quite enough detail. Attempts to repeat the experiment in 2020 were foiled by COVID-19 travel restrictions in Argentina and a heavy rainstorm that impeded data collection in Chile.
Project leaders factored in these lessons learned when planning for 2023, scheduling balloon releases every 15 minutes and carefully weighing locations with the best potential for success.
“New Mexico looked especially promising,” said Jie Gong, a researcher in the NASA Climate and Radiation Lab at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-investigator of the research on atmospheric gravity waves. “The majority of atmospheric gravity sources are convection, weather systems, and mountains. We wanted to eliminate all those possible sources.”
The project created a New Mexico “supersite” in the town of Moriarty where four atmospheric science teams were clustered: two from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and one each from the State University of New York (SUNY) Albany and SUNY Oswego.
Students began launching balloons at 10 a.m. the day before the eclipse.
“They worked in shifts through the day and night, and then everyone was on site for the eclipse,” said Eric Kelsey, research associate professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP northeast regional lead.
“Our hard work really paid off. The students had a real sense of accomplishment.”
Eric Kelsey
Research Associate Professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP Northeast Regional Lead.
Each balloon released by the science teams carried a radiosonde, an instrument package that measured temperature, location, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed during every second of its climb through the atmosphere. Radiosondes transmitted this stream of raw data to the team on the ground. Students uploaded the data to a shared server, where Gong and two graduate students spent months processing and analyzing it.
Confirmation that the eclipse had generated atmospheric gravity waves in the skies above New Mexico came in spring 2024.
“We put all the data together according to time, and when we plotted that time series, I could already see the stripes in the signal,” Gong said. “I bombarded everybody’s email. We were quite excited.”
Plymouth State University students Sarah Brigandi, left, and Sammantha Boulay release a weather balloon from Moriarty, New Mexico, to collect atmospheric data on Oct. 14, 2023.NASA For Students, Learning Curves Bring Opportunity
The program offered many students their first experience in collecting data. But the benefits go beyond technical and scientific skill.
“The students learned a ton through practicing launching weather balloons,” Kelsey said. “It was a huge learning curve. They had to work together to figure out all the logistics and troubleshoot. It’s good practice of teamwork skills.”
“All of this is technically complicated,” Des Jardins said. “While the focus now is on the science result, the most important part is that it was students who made this happen.”
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Science Activation program funds NEBP, along with contributions from the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Project and support from NASA’s Balloon Program Office.
Learn More:
Montana State-led ballooning project confirms hypothesis about eclipse effects on atmosphere
Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
NASA Selects Student Teams for High-Flying Balloon Science
NASA Science Activation
NASA Space Grant
Explore More
2 min read Leveraging Teacher Leaders to Share the Joy of NASA Heliophysics
Many teachers are exceptionally skilled at bridging students’ interests with real-world science. Now for the…
Article 22 hours ago 9 min read Proyecto de la NASA en Puerto Rico capacita a estudiantes en biología marina
Article 2 days ago 2 min read NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative Member Co-Authors Award-Winning Paper in Insects
On August 13, 2024, the publishers of the journal Insects notified authors of three papers…
Article 2 days ago View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Launched in May, ESA’s EarthCARE satellite has been making waves, with the first images from three of its scientific instruments already delivered. Now, the spotlight is firmly on the atmospheric lidar, the most advanced of the satellite’s four instruments.
This cutting-edge sensor has captured detailed 20 km-high vertical profiles of atmospheric aerosols – tiny particles and droplets from natural sources like wildfires, dust, and sea spray, and from human activities like industrial emissions or burning of wood – and clouds across various regions of the globe.
View the full article
-
By NASA
“I was born and raised in Kenya and come from a very humble background. I’m one of nine kids and the third born, meaning that I started responsibilities very early because we had to help our mother. Almost every two to three years, she had a baby, so you can imagine she was a very, very strong woman and powerful, too. When I think about that past, she is the person, and my father as well, who taught us that we can overcome any obstacle. It doesn’t matter what it is.
“I remember going to school without fees, and they would send me home. One time, when I was complaining about being sent home because of my lack of school fees, [my mother] could see I was affected by all this. She told me, ‘Those kids you see out there that look like they come from higher, well-off families came to this world the same way you came. So, you are no different than them. Don’t look at the material wealth and think you are less than them.’
“That’s the background that shaped me. It instilled a sense of believing in yourself. Anyone you see on the streets, their color or background doesn’t matter; we all come into this world the same way. You’re equipped with skills, so find your passion and go for it.
“When I look at that background, it’s the one that has helped me come this far.”
– Dr. Charles Gatebe, Chief of Atmospheric Science Branch, NASA’s Ames Research Center
Image Credit: NASA / Brandon Torres
Interviewer: NASA / Tahira Allen
Check out some of our other Faces of NASA.
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
When future astronauts explore Mars’s polar regions, they will see a green glow lighting up the night sky. For the first time, a visible nightglow has been detected in the martian atmosphere by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission.
View the full article
-
By NASA
4 min read
AWE Launching to Space Station to Study Atmospheric Waves via Airglow
NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, mission is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in November 2023, where it will make use of a natural, ethereal glow in Earth’s sky to study waves in our planet’s atmosphere.
Built by Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory in North Logan, Utah, AWE will be mounted on the exterior of the space station. From this perch, AWE will stare down toward Earth, tracking undulations in the air known as atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs).
Primarily originating in the lowest level of the atmosphere, AGWs may be caused by strong weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, or even thunderstorms. These weather events can momentarily push pockets of high-density air upwards into the atmosphere before the air sinks back down. This up-and-down bobbing often leaves behind distinctive ripples patterns in the clouds.
This photo shows examples of cloud patterns caused by atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). Warmer, denser air from lower in the atmosphere holds more water, so as weather events like wind and storms push those pockets of air to higher altitudes, that water forms clouds at the crests of those waves. Courtesy Alexa Halford; used with permission But AGWs continue all the way to space, where they contribute to what’s known as space weather – the tumultuous exchange of energy in the area surrounding our planet that can disrupt satellite and communications signals. AWE will measure AGWs at an atmospheric layer that begins some 54 miles (87 kilometers) in altitude, known as the mesopause.
“This is the first time that AGWs, especially the small-scale ones, will be measured globally at the mesopause, the gateway to the space,” said Michael Taylor, professor of physics at Utah State University and principal investigator for the mission. “More importantly, this is the first time we will be able to quantify the impacts of AGWs on space weather.”
This image taken from the International Space Station shows swaths of airglow hovering in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s new Atmospheric Waves Experiment will observe airglow from a perch on the space station to help scientists understand, and ultimately improve forecasts of, space weather changes in the upper atmosphere. NASA At the mesopause, where AWE will make its measurements, AGWs are revealed by colorful bands of light in our atmosphere known as airglow. AWE will “see” these waves by recording variations of airglow in infrared light, a wavelength range too long for human eyes to see. At these altitudes our atmosphere dips to its coldest temperatures – reaching as low as -150 degrees Fahrenheit (-101 degrees Celsius) – and the faint glow of infrared light is at its brightest.
By watching that infrared airglow grow brighter and dimmer as waves move through it, AWE will enable scientists to compute the size, power, and dispersion of AGWs like never before. It was also designed to see smaller AGWs, detecting short-scale ripples in airglow that previous missions would miss.
“AWE will be able to resolve waves at finer horizontal scales than what satellites can usually see at those altitudes, which is part of what makes the mission unique,” said Ruth Lieberman, AWE mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
This artist’s conception depicts AWE scanning the atmosphere from aboard the International Space Station. AWE will measure variations in infrared airglow to track atmospheric gravity waves as they move up from the lower atmosphere into space. Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory From its vantage point on the space station, AWE’s Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM) instrument will scan the mesopause below it. AWE’s AMTM consists of four identical telescopes, which together comprise a wide-field-of-view imaging radiometer, an instrument that measures the brightness of light at specific wavelength ranges. The relative brightness of different wavelengths can be used to create temperature maps, which in turn reveal how AGWs are moving through the atmosphere. It will be the most thorough study of AGWs and their effects on the upper atmosphere ever conducted.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that
supports HTML5 video
From its unique vantage point on the International Space Station, NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) will look directly down into Earth’s atmosphere to study how gravity waves travel through the upper atmosphere. Data collected by AWE will enable scientists to determine the physics and characteristics of atmospheric gravity waves and how terrestrial weather influences the ionosphere, which can affect communication with satellites. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab As a payload headed to the space station, AWE was required to hold four crucial safety reviews. The mission was successfully certified as a station payload at its last review in July 2023. Part of this certification involved “sharp edge” testing with astronaut gloves to ensure safety during AWE’s installation and maintenance on the exterior of the space station.
AWE is the first NASA mission to attempt this type of science to provide insight into how terrestrial and space weather interactions may affect satellite communications and tracking in orbit.
Following AWE’s installation on the International Space Station, the team’s focus will be to share the instrument’s data and results with the science community and the public. More information about AWE is available on the mission website: https://www.awemission.org/.
By J. Titus Stupfel, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.