NASA : NASA Begins Sixth Year of Airborne Antarctic Ice Change Study

Hola amigos: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos informa sobre sus estudios en la Antártica sobre que  comienza Sexto Año de Airborne Antártida Estudio Cambio de Hielo. Ellos dicen..."NASA está llevando a cabo su sexto año consecutivo de vuelos de investigación Operación IceBridge sobre la Antártida para estudiar los cambios en la capa de hielo del continente, glaciares y hielo marino. Campaña aérea de este año, que comenzó su primer vuelo la mañana del jueves, volverá a examinar una sección de la capa de hielo de la Antártida que hace poco se encontró que en un declive irreversible.........

Para las próximas semanas, los investigadores volarán a bordo de aviones de investigación de la NASA DC-8 de Punta Arenas, Chile. Este año también marca el regreso de la Antártida occidental tras la campaña de 2013 con base en la estación McMurdo de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencia.....

NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft will be flying scientists and instruments over Antarctica to study changes in the continent’s ice sheet, glaciers and sea ice.

Image Credit: 

NASA

 

NASA is carrying out its sixth consecutive year of Operation IceBridge research flights over Antarctica to study changes in the continent’s ice sheet, glaciers and sea ice. This year’s airborne campaign, which began its first flight Thursday morning, will revisit a section of the Antarctic ice sheet that recently was found to be in irreversible decline.

For the next several weeks, researchers will fly aboard NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft out of Punta Arenas, Chile. This year also marks the return to western Antarctica following 2013’s campaign based at the National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station.

“We are curious to see how much these glaciers have changed in two years,” said Eric Rignot, IceBridge science team co-lead and glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

IceBridge will use a suite of instruments that includes a laser altimeter, radar instruments, cameras, and a gravimeter, which is an instrument that detects small changes in gravity. These small changes reveal how much mass these glaciers have lost. Repeated annual measurements of key glaciers maintains a long-term record of change in the Antarctic that goes back to NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) which stopped collecting data in 2009.

IceBridge researchers plan to measure previously unsurveyed regions of Antarctica. One example is a plan to look at the upper portions of Smith Glacier in West Antarctica, which is thinning faster than any other glaciers in the region. The mission also plans to collect data in portions of the Antarctic Peninsula, such as the Larsen C, George VI and Wilkins ice shelves and the glaciers that drain into them. The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming faster than the rest of the continent.

“The Antarctic Peninsula is changing fairly rapidly and we need to be there to capture that change,” said Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The mission also will collect data on Antarctic sea ice, which recently reached a record high coverage. This contrasts with declining sea ice in the Arctic and is due do a variety of factors such as changing wind patterns. Antarctic sea ice coverage is slightly above average and the growth varies from one part of Antarctica to another. For example, ice cover in the Bellingshausen Sea has been decreasing while ice in the nearby Ross Sea is growing.

“There are very strong regional variations on how sea ice is changing,” said Nathan Kurtz, a sea ice scientist at Goddard. These regional trends together yield a small increase, so studying each region will help scientists get a better grasp on the processes affecting sea ice there.

In addition to extending ICESat’s data record over land and sea ice, IceBridge will also help set the stage for ICESat-2 by measuring ice the satellite will fly over. One of IceBridge’s highest priority surveys is a circular flight the DC-8 will fly around the South Pole at 88 degrees south latitude. This latitude line is where all of ICESat-2’s orbits will converge in the Southern Hemisphere. Measuring ice elevation at these locations will help researchers build a time series of data that spans more than a decade and provide a way to help verify ICESat-2’s data.

IceBridge’s Antarctic field campaign will run through late November. The IceBridge project science office is based at Goddard. The DC-8 research aircraft is based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center’s facility in Palmdale, California.

For more about Operation IceBridge, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information about NASA's recent Earth science activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

NASA : NASA Announces Briefing on New Mission to Track Global Carbon Dioxide

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Thank You, Earthlings

It's been called "the world's biggest selfie." We're not going to lie: We call it "a little overwhelming."

At NASA, we just wanted a way to reach out to people everywhere around the globe to celebrate Earth Day. So we asked people to post a selfie in response to a simple question, "Where are you on Earth Right Now?" More than 50,000 photos streamed in, and the end result is our global selfie, comprised of 36,422 of those photos.

You can find the full, 3.2 gigapixel mosaic here:

 http://go.nasa.gov/1n4y8qp

This is an important year for NASA Earth science. At a time when our planet is changing, five new NASA missions are launching to space to help provide a clearer view and better understanding of Earth.

We thank you, one more time, for stepping outside this Earth Day and helping us create awareness of -- and a new way of looking at -- our home planet.

You can find out more about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014 here:

 www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

NASA Announces Briefing on New Mission to Track Global Carbon Dioxide

NASA will hold a media briefing at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, June 12, at the NASA Headquarters James E. Webb Auditorium in Washington to discuss the upcoming Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 mission.

The briefings will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website.

OCO-2, NASA’s first spacecraft dedicated to studying carbon dioxide, is set for a July 1 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its mission is to measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. OCO-2 replaces a nearly identical spacecraft lost in a rocket launch mishap in February 2009.

The briefing participants are:
-- Betsy Edwards, OCO-2 program executive with the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
-- Ralph Basilio, OCO-2 project manager with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California
-- Mike Gunson, OCO-2 project scientist at JPL
-- Annmarie Eldering, OCO-2 deputy project scientist at JPL

Media may ask questions from participating agency centers or by telephone. To participate by phone, reporters must send an email providing their name, affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov by noon Thursday.

Media and the public also may ask questions during the briefing on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

OCO-2 is one of five NASA Earth science missions scheduled for launch in 2014. NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

JPL manages the OCO-2 mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information about NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/oco2

 

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@Hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com