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By NASA
On 5/22/24, Chinmay Deval, the Water Security Lead at the SERVIR Science Coordination Office, moderated a virtual panel for the ResilienceLinks monthly webinar series. ResilienceLinks is the knowledge platform for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Center for Resilience. The theme for May focused on Water Data and Climate Resilience. The panel featured distinguished water experts from the SERVIR global network, including: Jamilatou Chaibou Begou from the Agrometeorology, Hydrology, and Meteorology Regional Center/SERVIR West Africa, Chinaporn Meechaiya from the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center/SERVIR Southeast Asia, Jim Nelson, Principal Investigator of the SERVIR Applied Sciences Team at Brigham Young University, and Angelica Gutierrez from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Throughout the webinar, panelists shared their expertise and insights on the use of water data to enhance climate resilience. They discussed real-world applications, challenges in data accessibility, and innovative solutions for integrating local knowledge and gender equity into climate adaptation strategies. The webinar was hosted by Peter Epanchin, Senior Climate Adaptation and Resilience Advisor at USAID’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
It’s not just rising air and water temperatures influencing the decades-long decline of Arctic sea ice. Clouds, aerosols, even the bumps and dips on the ice itself can play a role. To explore how these factors interact and impact sea ice melting, NASA is flying two aircraft equipped with scientific instruments over the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland this summer. The first flights of the field campaign, called ARCSIX (Arctic Radiation Cloud Aerosol Surface Interaction Experiment), successfully began taking measurements on May 28.
Two NASA aircraft are taking coordinated measurements of clouds, aerosols and sea ice in the Arctic this summer as part of the ARCSIX field campaign. In this image from Thursday, May 30, NASA’s P-3 aircraft takes off from Pituffik Space Base in northwest Greenland behind the agency’s Gulfstream III aircraft.Credit: NASA/Dan Chirica “The ARCSIX mission aims to measure the evolution of the sea ice pack over the course of an entire summer,” said Patrick Taylor, deputy science lead with the campaign from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “There are many different factors that influence the sea ice. We’re measuring them to determine which were most important to melting ice this summer.”
On a completely clear day over smooth sea ice, most sunlight would reflect back into the atmosphere, which is one way that sea ice cools the planet. But when the ice has ridges or darker melt ponds — or is dotted with pollutants — it can change the equation, increasing the amount of ice melt. In the atmosphere, cloudy conditions and drifting aerosols also impact the rate of melt.
“An important goal of ARCSIX is to better understand the surface radiation budget — the energy interacting with the ice and the atmosphere,” said Rachel Tilling, a campaign scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
About 75 scientists, instrument operators, and flight crew are participating in ARCSIX’s two segments based out of Pituffik Space Base in northwest Greenland. The first three-week deployment, in May and June of this year, is timed to document the start of the ice melt season. The second deployment will occur in July and August to monitor late summer conditions and the start of the freeze-up period.
“Scientists from three key disciplines came together for ARCSIX: sea ice surface researchers, aerosol researchers, and cloud researchers,” Tilling said. “Each of us has been working to understand the radiation budget in our specific area, but we’ve brought all three areas together for this campaign.”
Two aircraft will fly over the Arctic during each deployment. NASA’s P-3 Orion aircraft from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, will fly below the clouds at times to document the surface properties of the ice and the amount of energy radiating off it. The team will also fly the aircraft through the clouds to sample aerosol particles, cloud optical properties, chemistry, and other atmospheric components.
A Gulfstream III aircraft, managed by NASA Langley, will fly higher in the atmosphere to observe properties of the tops of the clouds, take profiles of the atmosphere above the ice, and add a perspective similar to that of orbiting satellites.
The teams will also compare airborne data with satellite data. Satellite instruments like the Multi-angle Imaging Spectroradiometer and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer will provide additional information about clouds and aerosol particles, while the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 will provide insights into the ice topography below both satellites and aircraft.
The aircraft will fly coordinated routes to take measurements of the atmosphere above ice in three-dimensional space, said Sebastian Schmidt, the mission’s science lead with the University of Colorado Boulder.
“The area off the northern coast of Greenland can be considered the last bastion of multi-year sea ice, as the Arctic transitions to a seasonally ice-free ocean,” Schmidt said. “By observing here, we will gain insight into cloud-aerosol-sea ice-interaction processes of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Arctic — all while improving satellite-based remote sensing by comparing what we’re seeing with the airborne and satellite instruments.”
By Kate Ramsayer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated May 31, 2024 EditorKate D. RamsayerContactKate D. Ramsayerkate.d.ramsayer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA Data Shows How Drought Changes Wildfire Recovery in the West
California’s 2017 Thomas Fire (shown) was included in a new analysis of more than 1,500 wildland fires teasing out how drought and fire combine to affect western U.S. lands.USDA Forest Service/ Stuart Palley A new study using NASA satellite data reveals how drought affects the recovery of western ecosystems from fire, a result that could provide meaningful information for conservation efforts.
The West has been witnessing a trend of increasing number and intensity of wildland fires. Historically a natural part of the region’s ecology, fires have been exacerbated by climate change—including more frequent and intense droughts—and past efforts to suppress fires, which can lead to the accumulation of combustible material like fallen branches and leaves. But quantifying how fire and drought jointly affect ecosystems has proven difficult.
In the new study, researchers analyzed over 1,500 fires from 2014 to 2020 across the West, and also gathered data on drought conditions dating back to 1984. They found that droughts make it harder for grasslands and shrublands, such as those in Nevada and Utah, to recover after fires—even the less severe blazes. Forests, if not burned too badly, rebound better than grasslands and shrublands because some forest roots can tap into water deeper in the ground. The team reported its findings in the February 2024 issue of Nature Ecology & Environment.
“Many of the West’s grasslands experience low-severity fires,” said Shahryar Ahmed, lead author of the study and a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This study shows that even those blazes can trigger a slow recovery in these ecosystems if accompanied by a preceding drought.”
If ecosystems don’t have enough time to bounce back before another drought or fire, that could lead to permanent changes in the types of plants growing there. That, in turn, can increase the risk of soil erosion and landslides, and alter the usual patterns of water running off into streams and lakes.
“Once a fire is contained, that’s when the remediation efforts happen,” said Everett Hinkley, the national remote sensing program manager for the U.S. Forest Service, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “Understanding how a particular ecosystem and land cover type is going to respond after the fire informs what actions you need to take to restore the landscape.”
Without such restoration, changes in land cover can cascade to potentially affect agriculture, tourism, and other community livelihoods. To track the recovery of the different ecosystems, the researchers examined changes in evapotranspiration (ET)—the transfer of water to the atmosphere through evaporation from soil and open water and transpiration from plants—before and after the fires. Monitoring evapotranspiration helped the team identify whether different ecosystems, such as forests and grasslands, completely recovered after a fire, or if the recovery was delayed or disrupted.
That evapotranspiration data came from OpenET, a tool that calculates evapotranspiration at the scale of a quarter-acre across the western United States. It does so using models that harness publicly available data from the Landsat program, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, along with other NASA and NOAA satellites.
“This study highlights the dominant control of drought on altering resilience of vegetation to fires in the West,” said Erin Urquhart, the water resources program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With ongoing climate change, it is imperative that land managers, policymakers, and communities work together, informed by such research, to adapt to these changes, mitigating risks and ensuring the sustainable use of water and other natural resources.”
The research also showed that forests, grasslands, and shrublands all struggle to recover from droughts that occur close in time with high-severity fires, which are becoming more common in the West. That can lead to potentially lasting changes not only in the plant communities but also in local and regional water dynamics.
Severe fires damage plants to such an extent that evapotranspiration is greatly reduced in the following years, the researchers found. So instead of evaporating into the atmosphere, more water sinks into the ground as recharge or becomes runoff.
Using a subset of nearly 800 fires from 2016 to 2018, the researchers calculated that across all the ecoregions in the study, an average of about 528 billion gallons (two cubic kilometers) of water was diverted as runoff or recharge during the first year after a fire. That’s equivalent to North Dakota’s annual water demand, or one quarter of Shasta Lake, California’s largest humanmade lake.
When more water becomes runoff, it means less could be available for ecosystem recovery or agriculture. As Earth’s climate continues to warm, understanding these shifts is crucial for developing strategies to manage water resources more effectively and ensure water security for future generations.
By: Emily DeMarco, NASA Earth Science Division
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Last Updated Mar 27, 2024 EditorEmily DeMarcoContactEmily DeMarcoemily.p.demarco@nasa.gov Related Terms
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