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Untangling the ocean biological carbon pump
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
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Internet of Animals
The Internet of Animals project combines animal tracking tags with remote sensing, to better understand habitat use and movement patterns. This kind of research enables more informed ecological management and conservation efforts, and broadens our understanding of how different ecosystems are reacting to a changing climate.
https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-earth-exchange-nex/new-missions-support/internet-of-animals/
FATE: dFAD Trajectory Tool
FATE will quantify dFAD (drifting fish aggregating devices) activity in relation to ocean currents, fish biomass, and animal telemetry at Palmyra Atoll, which is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) National Wildlife Refuge and is part of the U.S. Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM) in the central Pacific Ocean. This innovative decision support tool will use NASA observations and numerical models to predict future dFAD trajectories and inform resource managers whether they should deploy tactical resources (boats, personnel) to monitor, intercept, or retrieve dFADs that have entered the MPA.
SeaSTAR
SeaSTAR aims to provide multi-spectral aerosol optical depth (AOD) and aerosol optical properties using a custom-built robotic sun/sky photometer. The instrument is designed to operate from a ship and is planned to deploy aboard the NOAA research vessel RV Shearwater in September 2024 to support the PACE-PAX airborne campaign.
PACE Validation Science Team Project: AirSHARP
Airborne asSessment of Hyperspectral Aerosol optical depth and water-leaving Reflectance Product Performance for PACE
The goal of AirSHARP is to provide high fidelity spatial coverage and spectral data for ocean color and aerosol products for validation of the PACE Ocean Color Instrument (OCI). Coastal influences on oceanic waters can produce high optical complexity for remote sensing especially in dynamic waters in both space and time. Dynamic coastal water features include riverine plumes (sediments and pollution), algal blooms, and kelp beds. Further, coastal California has a range of atmospheric conditions related to fires. We will accomplish validation of PACE products by combined airborne and field instrumentation for Monterey Bay, California.
Water2Coasts
Watersheds, Water Quality, and Coastal Communities in Puerto Rico
Water2Coasts is an interdisciplinary island landscape to coastal ocean assessment with socioeconomic implications. The goal of Water2Coasts is to conduct a multi-scale, interdisciplinary (i.e., hydrologic, remote sensing, and social) study on how coastal waters of east, and south Puerto Rico are affected by watersheds of varying size, land use, and climate regimes, and how these may in turn induce a variety of still poorly understood effects on coastal and marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and seagrass beds.
US Coral Reef Task Force (USCRTF)
The USCRTF was established in 1998 by Presidential Executive Order to lead U.S. efforts to preserve and protect coral reef ecosystems. The USCRTF includes leaders of Federal agencies, U.S. States, territories, commonwealths, and Freely Associated States. The USCRTF helps build partnerships, strategies, and support for on-the-ground action to conserve coral reefs. NASA ARC scientists are members of the Steering Committee, Watershed Working Group, and Disease and Disturbance Working Group, and lead the Climate Change Working Group to assist in the use of NASA remote sensing data and tools for coastal studies, including coral reef ecosystems. Data from new and planned hyperspectral missions will advance research in heavily impacted coastal ecosystems.
CyanoSCape
Cyanobacteria and surface phytoplankton biodiversity of the Cape freshwater systems
The diversity of phytoplankton is also found in freshwater systems. In Southern Africa, land use change and agricultural practices has hindered hydrological processes and compromised freshwater ecosystems. These impacts are compounded by increasingly variable rainfall and temperature fluctuations associated with climate change posing risks to water quality, food security, and aquatic biodiversity and sustainability. The goal of CyanoSCape is to utilize airborne hyperspectral data and field spectral and water sample data to distinguish phytoplankton biodiversity, including the potentially toxic cyanobacteria.
mCDR: Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal
The goals of this effort are to conduct literature review, analysis, and ocean simulation to provide scientifically vetted estimates of the impacts, risks, and benefits of various potential mCDR methods.
Ocean modeling
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) in a changing climate
The goals of this project are to build scientific understanding of the AMOC physics and its implications for biogeochemical cycles and climate, to assess the representation of AMOC in historical global ocean state estimates, and evaluate future needs for AMOC systems in a changing climate.
Elucidating the role of the ocean circulation in changing North Atlantic Ocean nutrients and biological productivity
This project will conduct analysis of NASA’s ECCO-Darwin ocean biogeochemical state estimate and historical satellite ocean color observations in order to understand the underlying causes for the sharp decline in biological productivity observed in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Integrated GEOS and ECCO Earth system modeling and data assimilation to advance seasonal-to-decadal prediction through improved understanding and representation of air-sea interactions
This analysis will build understanding of upper ocean, air-sea interaction, and climate processes by using data from the SWOT mission and ultra-high-resolution GEOS-ECCO simulations.
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. The mission is targeting an Oct. 10, 2024, launch.NASA/JPL-Caltech The first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth, Europa Clipper aims to find out if the ice-encased moon Europa could be habitable.
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, the largest the agency has ever built for a planetary mission, will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Europa, an intriguing icy moon of Jupiter. The spacecraft’s launch period opens Thursday, Oct. 10.
Learn more about how NASA’s Europa Clipper came together – and how it will explore an ocean moon of Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Data from previous NASA missions has provided scientists with strong evidence that an enormous salty ocean lies underneath the frozen surface of the moon. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of the moon to gather data needed to determine whether there are places below its thick frozen crust that could support life.
Here are eight things to know about the mission:
1. Europa is one of the most promising places to look for currently habitable conditions beyond Earth.
There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy — may exist at Europa right now. This mission will gather the information scientists need to find out for sure. The moon may hold an internal ocean with twice the water of Earth’s oceans combined, and it may also host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface. If the mission determines that Europa is habitable, it would mean there may be more habitable worlds in our solar system and beyond than we have imagined.
2. The spacecraft will fly through one of the most punishing radiation environments in our solar system — second only to the Sun’s.
Jupiter is surrounded by a gigantic magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. As the field spins, it captures and accelerates charged particles, creating radiation that can damage spacecraft. Mission engineers designed a spacecraft vault to shield sensitive electronics from radiation, and they plotted orbits that will limit the time Europa Clipper spends in most radiation-heavy areas around Jupiter.
3. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter, studying Europa while flying by the moon dozens of times.
The spacecraft will make looping orbits around Jupiter that bring it close to Europa for 49 science-dedicated flybys. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in Jupiter’s dangerous radiation zone near Europa before zipping back out. Two to three weeks later, it will repeat the process, making another flyby.
4. Europa Clipper features NASA’s most sophisticated suite of science instruments yet.
To determine if Europa is habitable, Europa Clipper must assess the moon’s interior, composition, and geology. The spacecraft carries nine science instruments and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. In order to obtain the best science during each flyby, all the science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass. Scientists will then layer the data together to paint a full picture of the moon.
5. With antennas and solar arrays fully deployed, Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
The spacecraft extends 100 feet (30.5 meters) from one end to the other and about 58 feet (17.6 meters) across. That’s bigger than a basketball court, thanks in large part to the solar arrays, which need to be huge so they can collect enough sunlight while near Jupiter to power the instruments, electronics, and other subsystems.
6. It’s a long journey to Jupiter.
Jupiter is on average some 480 million miles (about 770 million kilometers) from Earth; both planets are in motion, and a spacecraft can carry only a limited amount of fuel. Mission planners are sending Europa Clipper past Mars and then Earth, using the planets’ gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the spacecraft’s trek. After journeying about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) over 5½ years, the spacecraft will fire its engines to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.
7. Institutions across the U.S. and Europe have contributed to Europa Clipper.
Currently, about a thousand people work on the mission, including more than 220 scientists from both the U.S. and Europe. Since the mission was officially approved in 2015, more than 4,000 people have contributed to Europa Clipper, including teams who work for contractors and subcontractors.
8. More than 2.6 million of us are riding along with the spacecraft, bringing greetings from one water world to another.
As part of a mission campaign called “Message in a Bottle,” the spacecraft is carrying a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, cosigned by millions of people from nearly every country in the world. Their names have been stenciled onto a microchip attached to a tantalum metal plate that seals the spacecraft’s electronics vault. The plate also features waveforms of people saying the word “water” in over 100 spoken languages.
More About Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
Find more information about Europa here:
https://europa.nasa.gov
Europa Clipper Teachable Moment See Europa’s Chaos Terrain in Crisp Detail Europa Clipper Gets Its Super-Size Solar Arrays News Media Contacts
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-6215
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
A NASA-developed material made of carbon nanotubes will enable our search for exoplanets—some of which might be capable of supporting life. Originally developed in 2007 by a team of researchers led by Innovators of the Year John Hagopian and Stephanie Getty at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, this carbon nanotube technology is being refined for potential use on NASA’s upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)—the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars.
As shown in the figure below, carbon nanotubes look like graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice) that is rolled into a tube. The super-dark material consists of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (i.e., nested nanotubes) that grow vertically into a “forest.” The carbon nanotubes are 99% empty space so the light entering the material doesn’t get reflected. Instead, the light enters the nanotube forest and jiggles electrons in the hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, converting the light to heat. The ability of the carbon nanotubes to eliminate almost all light is enabling for NASA’s scientific instruments because stray light limits how sensitive the observations can be. When applied to instrument structures, this material can eliminate much of the stray light and enable new and better observations.
Left: Artist’s conception of graphene, single and multiwalled carbon nanotube structures. Right: Scanning electron microscope image of vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube forest with a section removed in the center. Credit: Delft University/Dr. Sten Vollebregt and NASA GSFC Viewing exoplanets is incredibly difficult; the exoplanets revolve around stars that are 10 billion times brighter than they are. It’s like looking at the Sun and trying to see a dim star next to it in the daytime. Specialized instruments called coronagraphs must be used to block the light from the star to enable these exoplanets to be viewed. The carbon nanotube material is employed in the coronagraph to block as much stray light as possible from entering the instrument’s detector.
The image below depicts a notional telescope and coronagraph imaging an exoplanet. The telescope collects the light from the distant star and exoplanet. The light is then directed to a coronagraph that collimates the beam, making the light rays parallel, and then the beam is reflected off the apodizer mirror, which is used to precisely control the diffraction of light. Carbon nanotubes on the apodizer mirror absorb the stray light that is diffracted off edges of the telescope structures, so it does not contaminate the observations. The light is then focused on the focal plane mask, which blocks the light from the star but allows light from the exoplanet to pass. The light gets collimated again and is then reflected off a deformable mirror to correct distortion in the image. Finally, the light passes through the Lyot Stop, which is also coated with carbon nanotubes to remove the remaining stray light. The beam is then focused onto the detector array, which forms the image.
Even with all these measures some stray light still reaches the detector, but the coronagraph creates a dark zone where only the light coming from the exoplanet can be seen. The final image on the right in the figure below shows the remaining light from the star in yellow and the light from the exoplanet in red in the dark zone.
Schematic of a notional telescope and coronagraph imaging an exoplanet Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC HWO will use a similar scheme to search for habitable exoplanets. Scientists will analyze the spectrum of light captured by HWO to determine the gases in the atmosphere of the exoplanet. The presence of water vapor, oxygen, and perhaps other gases can indicate if an exoplanet could potentially support life.
But how do you make a carbon-nanotube-coated apodizer mirror that could be used on the HWO? Hagopian’s company Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC received Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to address this challenge.
Carbon nanotubes are grown by depositing catalyst seeds onto a substrate and then placing the substrate into a tube-shaped furnace and heating it to 1382 degrees F, which is red hot! Gases containing carbon are then flowed into the heated tube, and at these temperatures the gases are absorbed by the metal catalyst and transform into a solution, similar to how carbon dioxide in soda water fizzes. The carbon nanotubes literally grow out of the substrate into vertically aligned tubes to form a “forest” wherever the catalyst is located.
Since the growth of carbon nanotubes on the apodizer mirror must occur only in designated areas where stray light is predicted, the catalyst must be applied only to those areas. The four main challenges that had to be overcome to develop this process were: 1) how to pattern the catalyst precisely, 2) how to get a mirror to survive high temperatures without distorting, 3) how to get a coating to survive high temperatures and still be shiny, and 4) how to get the carbon nanotubes to grow on top of a shiny coating. The Advanced Nanophotonics team refined a multi-step process (see figure below) to address these challenges.
Making an Apodizer Mirror for use in a coronagraph Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC First a silicon mirror substrate is fabricated to serve as the base for the mirror. This material has properties that allow it to survive very high temperatures and remain flat. These 2-inch mirrors are so flat that if one was scaled to the diameter of Earth, the highest mountain would only be 2.5 inches tall!
Next, the mirror is coated with multiple layers of dielectric and metal, which are deposited by knocking atoms off a target and onto the mirror in a process called sputtering. This coating must be reflective to direct the desired photons, but still be able to survive in the hot environment with corrosive gases that is required to grow carbon nanotubes.
Then a material called resist that is sensitive to light is applied to the mirror and a pattern is created in the resist with a laser. The image on the mirror is chemically developed to remove the resist only in the areas illuminated by the laser, creating a pattern where the mirror’s reflecting surface is exposed only where nanotube growth is desired.
The catalyst is then deposited over the entire mirror surface using sputtering to provide the seeds for carbon nanotube growth. A process called liftoff is used to remove the catalyst and the resist that are located where nanotubes growth is not needed. The mirror is then put in a tube furnace and heated to 1380 degrees Fahrenheit while argon, hydrogen, and ethylene gases are flowed through the tube, which allows the chemical vapor deposition of carbon nanotubes where the catalyst has been patterned. The apodizer mirror is cooled and removed from the tube furnace and characterized to make sure it is still flat, reflective where desired, and very black everywhere else.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory will need a coronagraph with an optimized apodizer mirror to effectively view exoplanets and gather their light for evaluation. To make sure NASA has the best chance to succeed in this search for life, the mirror design and nanotube technology are being refined in test beds across the country.
Under the SBIR program, Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC has delivered apodizers and other coronagraph components to researchers including Remi Soummer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Eduardo Bendek and Rus Belikov at NASA Ames, Tyler Groff at NASA Goddard, and Arielle Bertrou-Cantou and Dmitri Mawet at the California Institute of Technology. These researchers are testing these components and the results of these studies will inform new designs to eventually enable the goal of a telescope with a contrast ratio of 10 billion to 1.
Reflective Apodizers delivered to Scientists across the country Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC In addition, although the desired contrast ratio cannot be achieved using telescopes on Earth, testing apodizer mirror designs on ground-based telescopes not only facilitates technology development, but helps determine the objects HWO might observe. Using funding from the SBIR program, Advanced Nanophotonics also developed transmissive apodizers for the University of Notre Dame to employ on another instrument—the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) Upgrade. In this case the carbon nanotubes were patterned and grown on glass that transmits the light from the telescope into the coronagraph. The Gemini telescope is an 8.1-meter telescope located in Chile, high atop a mountain in thin air to allow for better viewing. Dr. Jeffrey Chilcote is leading the effort to upgrade the GPI and install the carbon nanotube patterned apodizers and Lyot Stops in the coronagraph to allow viewing of exoplanets starting next year. Discoveries enabled by GPI may also drive future apodizer designs.
More recently, the company was awarded a Phase II SBIR contract to develop next-generation apodizers and other carbon nanotube-based components for the test beds of existing collaborators and new partners at the University of Arizona and the University of California Santa Clara.
Tyler Groff (left) and John Hagopian (right) display a carbon nanotube patterned apodizer mirror used in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center coronagraph test bed. Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC As a result of this SBIR-funded technology effort, Advanced Nanophotonics has collaborated with NASA Scientists to develop a variety of other applications for this nanotube technology.
A special carbon nanotube coating developed by Advanced Nanophotonics was used on the recently launched NASA Ocean Color Instrument onboard the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission that is observing both the atmosphere and phytoplankton in the ocean, which are key to the health of our planet. A carbon nanotube coating that is only a quarter of the thickness of a human hair was applied around the entrance slit of the instrument. This coating absorbs 99.5% of light in the visible to infrared and prevents stray light from reflecting into the instrument to enable more accurate measurements. Hagopian’s team is also collaborating with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) team to apply the technology to mitigate stray light in the European Space Agency’s space-based gravity wave mission.
They are also working to develop carbon nanotubes for use as electron beam emitters for a project sponsored by the NASA Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations (PICASSO) Program. Led by Lucy Lim at NASA Goddard, this project aims to develop an instrument to probe asteroid and comet constituents in space.
In addition, Advanced Nanophotonics worked with researcher Larry Hess at NASA Goddard’s Detector Systems Branch and Jing Li at the NASA Ames Research Center to develop a breathalyzer to screen for Covid-19 using carbon nanotube technology. The electron mobility in a carbon nanotube network enables high sensitivity to gases in exhaled breath that are associated with disease.
This carbon nanotube-based technology is paying dividends both in space, as we continue our search for life, and here on Earth.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort.
PROJECT LEAD
John Hagopian (Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC)
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION
SMD-funded SBIR project
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Last Updated Sep 03, 2024 Related Terms
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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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Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
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