NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Airborne Surface Water and Ocean Topography, or AirSWOT, project uses an interferometer mounted in a NASA King Air B200. The Ka-band radar interferometer will help the science team determine the kinetic energy of the ocean circulation and how the ocean uptake of heat and carbon is being transferred into the atmosphere to verify its effects on climate change. The sensor is also collecting hydrology measurements of the storage changes in terrestrial surface water bodies, soil content depending on seasonal changes, and river discharges into large bodies of water like the ocean.

It is estimated that 33-50% of coral reefs worldwide have been largely or completely degraded (International Society for Reef Studies Consensus Statement, October 2015). Yet the data supporting these predictions are surprisingly sparse, and thereby their relation to the environment is unclear. The COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) will pave the way to better predict the future of this global ecosystem and steward them through global change by addressing the question: What is the relationship between coral reef condition and biogeophysical forcing parameters?

CORAL covers the Mariana Islands, Palau, portions of the Great Barrier Reef, and the Main Hawaiian Islands. These regions cover wide ranges of reef type, physical forcing, human threats, and biodiversity.

CORAL will provide the most extensive and uniform picture to date of coral reef condition through the use of the Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM) instrument aboard the Tempus Applied Solutions Gulfstream-IV (G-IV) aircraft. PRISM will record the spectra of light reflected upward toward the instrument from the ocean below. Its very high spectral resolution is then used to identify reef composition (i.e., coral, algae, and sand) and model primary production. In situ data are obtained to validate the remote observations.

The Olympic Mountains Experiment (OLYMPEX) is a ground validation field campaign designed to verify and validate satellite measurement of precipitation from the constellation of satellites known as the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). The primary goal of OLYMPEX is to validate rain and snow measurements in midlatitude frontal systems moving from ocean to coast to mountains and to determine how remotely sensed measurements of precipitation by GPM can be applied to a range of hydrologic, weather forecasting and climate data. OLYMPEX will have a wide variety of ground instrumentation, and several radars and aircraft monitoring oceanic storm systems as they approach and traverse the Peninsula and the Olympic Mountains. The intensive observing period will be from November 2015 through February 2016.

The Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface, or AirMOSS, investigation is gathering high-resolution measurements of root-zone soil moisture in representative areas of North American ecosystems, quantifying the impact of variations in soil moisture on the estimation of regional carbon fluxes, and extrapolating the estimates of regional carbon fluxes to the North American continental scale.  AirMoss uses an airborne ultra-high frequency synthetic aperture radar capable of penetrating through substantial vegetation canopies and soil to depths down to 4 feet (1.2 meters). For this mission, NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, in P-band configuration is mounted in a pod and flown on a NASA G-III.

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. HS3 is motivated by hypotheses related to the relative roles of the large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes. HS3 addresses the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification as well as the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. Addressing these science questions requires sustained measurements over several years due to the limited sampling opportunities in any given hurricane season. Past NASA hurricane field campaigns have all faced the same limitation: a relatively small sample (3-4) of storms forming during the campaigns under a variety of scenarios and undergoing widely varying evolutions. The small sample is not just a function of tropical storm activity in any given year, but also the distance of storms from the base of operations.

The NASA Global Hawk UASs are ideal platforms for investigations of hurricanes, capable of flight altitudes greater than 55,000 ft and flight durations of up to 30 h. HS3 will utilize two Global Hawks, one with an instrument suite geared toward measurement of the environment and the other with instruments suited to inner-core structure and processes. The environmental payload includes the scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder (HIS), dropsondes, theTWiLiTE Doppler wind lidar, and the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) while the over-storm payload includes the HIWRAP conically scanning Doppler radar, the HIRAD multi-frequency interferometric radiometer, and the HAMSR microwave sounder. Field measurements will take place for one month each during the hurricane seasons of 2012-2014.

The Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment (IPHEx) is a ground validation field campaign that will take place in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States from May 1 to June 15, 2014. IPHEx is co-led by NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission, with partners at Duke University and NOAA's Hydrometerological Testbed.

The field campaign has two primary goals. The first is to evaluate how well observations from precipitation-monitoring satellites, including the recently launched GPM Core Observatory, match up to the best estimate of the true precipitation measured at ground level and how that precipitation is distributed in clouds. The second is to use the collected precipitation data to evaluate models that describe and predict the hydrology of the region. These models are used for predicting how much water is available in rivers and aquifers, for resource management and for flood and landslide prediction in the Upper Tennessee, Catawba-Santee, Yadkin-Pee Dee and Savannah river basins.

A number of instruments in the region already measure rain from the ground, and this campaign will add more. In the Pigeon River basin on the North Carolina side of the Upper Tennessee watershed and the Catawba River Basin in North and South Carolina, rain gauges, stream gauges, instruments called disdrometers that measure drop size, soil moisture sensors, and other equipment will measure rainfall.

The NASA Polarimetric weather radar (NPOL) and the Dual-frequency, Dual-polarimetric, Doppler radar (D3R) will be located on a cattle ranch in southern Rutherford County, North Carolina just across the Carolinas' border and north of Spartanburg S.C., and the NOAA X-band polarimetric radar (NOXP)  will be located on a ridge above the Pigeon Basin. These radars will take measurements of the air column above the river basins. Other smaller radars throughout the study area will get radar coverage of the region that’s as good as possible, given the challenges of the mountainous terrain.

In addition to the ground measurements, NASA's ER-2 plane will fly above with instruments to simulate satellite measurements, and the University of North Dakota's Citation aircraft will fly inside storms to measure raindrops and precipitation particles inside clouds. Data from satellite overpasses will also be included.

Together all the data will be used to improve rainfall estimates from the GPM Core Observatory and other precipitation satellites.

Recent years have seen extreme changes in the Arctic. Particularly striking are changes within the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean, and especially in the seas north of the Alaskan coast. These areas have experienced record warming, reduced sea ice extent, and loss of ice
in areas that had been ice‐covered throughout human memory. Even the oldest and thickest ice types have failed to survive through the summer melt period in areas such as the Beaufort Sea and Canada Basin, and fundamental changes in ocean conditions such as earlier phytoplankton blooms may be underway. A basic question that is significant for the entire Earth system is whether these regions have passed a tipping point, such that they are now essentially acting as sub‐Arctic seas where ice disappears in summer, or instead whether the changes are transient, with the potential for the ice pack to recover. The answer may depend largely on conditions in areas known as marginal ice zones (MIZ); areas where the "ice‐albedo feedback" driven by solar warming is highest, ice melt is extensive, and where human and marine mammal activity is greatest.

Despite the significance of the MIZ, basic parameters such as sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), and a range of sea ice characteristics are still insufficiently understood in these areas, and especially so during the summer melt period. The project proposed here, identified collectively as the "Marginal Ice Zone Ocean and Ice Observations and Processes EXperiment" (MIZOPEX), will directly address these information gaps through a targeted, intensive observing campaign that exploits unique capabilities of multiple classes of UAS (NASA SIERRA, Insitu ScanEagles, and a microUAS) combined with in‐situ sensing and satellite observations. Specific research areas to be addressed using MIZOPEX data are: relationships between ocean skin temperatures and subsurface temperatures and how these evolve over time in an Arctic environment during summer; variability in sea ice conditions such as thickness, age, and albedo within the MIZ; interactions of SST, salinity and ice conditions during the melt cycle; and validation of satellite‐derived SST and ice concentration fields provided by AVHRR, MODIS, AMSR‐E and the NPP/JPSS VIIRS.

The Soil Moisture Active Passive Validation Experiment 2012, or SMAPVEX12, will use radiometer and radar L-band microwave measurements to study retrieval of land surface soil moisture over vegetation at an agricultural site near Winnipeg, Canada. Knowledge gained from this research will help improve the soil moisture retrieval algorithms to be used for NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive, or SMAP, satellite mission planned for launch in 2014. Two aircraft will fly in the field campaign during June and July. A NASA G-III will carry the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, mounted in a pod under the aircraft. The second aircraft, a DHC-6 Twin Otter, will carry the PALS, or Passive Active L- and S-band Sensor, a combined polarimetric radiometer and radar sharing an array antenna.

Follow the progress of the SMAPVEX12 mission here: http://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/blogs/

The Global Precipitation Measurement Cold-season Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) will measure light rain and snow in Ontario, Canada in January and February. NASA will fly an airborne science laboratory above Canadian snowstorms to tackle a difficult challenge facing the upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite mission -- measuring snowfall from space. GPM is an international satellite mission that will set a new standard for precipitation measurements from space, providing next-generation observations of worldwide rain and snow every three hours.
Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/winter-dc8.html

Falling snow is critically important for society in terms of freshwater resources, atmospheric water and energy cycles, and ecosystems. The GCPEx mission uses instrumented aircraft (NASA DC-8, NASA-funded University of North Dakota Cessna Citation, and Canadian National Research Council Convair 580) for flights over heavily-instrumented ground sites located in and around the Environment Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments (CARE) located in Egbert, Ontario.

NASA Langley's UC-12 rolls toward a stop after a morning of flight research for evaluating the next-generation of satellite instruments that study aerosols – tiny chemicals and particles in the atmosphere.

The UC-12 flew high with two remote-sensing lidar (laser) instruments aboard, while Langley’s B-200 flew low taking in-situ, or in place, measurements with a suite of about 10 instruments.

"The remote-sensors on the aircraft are prototypes for future systems," said John Hair, principal investigator for DEVOTE (Development and Evaluation of satellite Validation Tools by Experimenters). "We want to evaluate the measurements with detailed in-situ measurements, ground station measurements, and satellite measurements."

The DEVOTE project is a training initiative lead by a team of early career scientists and engineers who are gaining mission experience and contributing to the latest Earth science research through a field campaign.

The project is sponsored by the Hands-On Project Experience, an initiative funded by the Office of Chief Engineer and the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

Credit: NASA/Mike Finneran
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/DEVOTE.html

The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. HS3 is motivated by hypotheses related to the relative roles of the large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes. HS3 addresses the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification as well as the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. Addressing these science questions requires sustained measurements over several years due to the limited sampling opportunities in any given hurricane season.

The Common Operations and Management Portal for Airborne Science Systems (COMPASS) will support the Airborne Science Program (ASP) and the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Earth Science division by providing a suite of web-based enterprise management capabilities and improved situational awareness tools to support Airborne Science Missions. COMPASS will provide a common operating picture for improved situational awareness for all participants in NASA Airborne Science missions from scientists and engineers, to managers, as well as the general public. The intent of the system is to encourage more responsive and collaborative measurements between instruments on multiple aircraft, satellites, and on the surface in order to increase the scientific value of the measurements, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of flight missions. At its most basic, the system will provide a means for visualizing the position of the aircraft and instruments during the course of the mission. Such information is made more useful when compared with or overlaid upon other datasets and model outputs used for mission planning and science data analysis. In addition to map-based information, COMPASS will enable communication between mission team members to enable analysis and discussion of multiple data sources in order to plan and execute science missions.