After decades of looking into space, NASA is turning its technology back to Earth to study the effects of drought, fires and climate change on the Blue Planet.
Last week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, scientists and state officials met to discuss how satellite data, 3-D imagery and new radar technologies and lasers can provide invaluable information about rapidly changing Earth systems.
The meeting was seen by some as marking a sea change for the previously siloed agencies, underlining the need to work together to solve the climate crisis.
"I don't want to be overly dramatic, but really, this discussion is about saving our planet," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the crowd, which included NASA Earth and space scientists. and JPL, local Congressional representatives, and California Environment Secretaries Wade Crowfoot and Jared Blumenfeld.
AdUpcoming Earth-centric missions will provide a more accurate view of "everything that's going on" with the oceans, the planet and the atmosphere, Nelson said. Among the most expensive items were new tools to measure snow cover and groundwater, satellites to monitor methane emissions, and remote sensing assets to assess the impact of hazards such as wildfires, earthquakes, and landslides.
“We are facing an existential crisis on this planet,” said Crowfoot, the state's natural resources secretary. "These challenges are intense... But there is no better place than California to do this work, because we understand the seriousness of the threat."
The meeting between California and federal officials was a far cry from 2018, when, frustrated by the Trump administration's attempts to overshadow climate research, then-Governor Jerry Brown insisted that California launch its "own damn satellite, to find out where the contamination is and how we are going to eliminate it”.
Now, three years later, Californians need only look out the window to get an idea of what scientists can see from above. Wildfires are burning record acreage across the West, while a worsening drought is depleting the region's water supplies to levels never seen before. The state also recorded its hottest summer in 2021.
Many at the meeting hope the NASA and JPL findings will help combat global warming by informing decision-makers as they determine the best paths forward. "It's really a game changer to be able to have this data," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, adding that the United States can also lead the rest of the world in using the same tools. “Because we will never solve the climate issue until everyone is on board.”
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Many of the projects have been in development for years, but a recent memorandum of understanding between the state and JPL helped get additional projects off the ground, Crowfoot noted, including critical elements focused on water resiliency. In recent months, the western US has suffered from drought conditions so severe that officials have shut down the Lake Oroville hydroelectric power plant for the first time and declared the first water shortage on the Colorado River, among other actions.
A new web-based platform, OpenET, will provide satellite information on evapotranspiration, the process by which water leaves plants, soils and other surfaces, that could help state officials understand water use in communities. agricultural areas and farmers with precision irrigation. "As states, we do our best to manage this water resource, but we will never do it with the sophistication we need without partners like NASA," Crowfoot said, adding that the agency could be the "tip of the spear" in combating climate change.
Other related items include surface water and ocean surveying tools known as SWOT, which will contribute to NASA's first global survey of Earth's surface waters. Every 21 days, SWOT will inspect nearly 600,000 miles of global rivers at least twice, helping drought forecasters and preparations for dangerous floods, officials said. The launch is planned for 2022.
According to JPL Acting Director Larry James, the next generation of water-measuring spacecraft will also allow scientists to measure the height and flows of fresh water for the first time, while laser imaging spectrometers will help study ice melt. and the volume of snow.
But scientists don't just study water. Methane was also a focus of discussion, and a new satellite due to launch in 2023 will help monitor concentrations of such a harmful emission, the second largest contributor to greenhouse warming after carbon dioxide.
Blumenfeld, California's environmental protection secretary, noted that the three largest producers of methane in the state are the oil and gas industry, landfills and agriculture (particularly large animal farms and dairies). The new tool will allow anyone to see if an oil refinery, for example, is leaking methane.
"It gives accountability, which is a critical element that we need to get to in order to deal with the climate crisis, and it wouldn't happen without NASA and JPL," Blumenfeld said. "Globally, and living in California, this is really important."
But space missions have also come under scrutiny for their own environmental impact, as the propellants needed to launch rockets into space can expel carbon dioxide, liquid hydrogen, kerosene or other chemicals into the atmosphere.
The launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket, from SpaceX, Elon Musk's privately owned space transportation company, burned around 400 metric tons of kerosene and emitted more carbon dioxide in a few minutes than the average car did in more than two centuries. , according to reports. The number of commercial spaceflights is expected to increase tenfold in the coming years.
However, NASA managers say the scale of their projects is getting "smaller and smarter," with one official noting that the methane satellite is "the size of a shoebox." "It's an absolutely minuscule part, but it's a real concern," Melroy said of rocket emissions, noting that the agency is working on developing more sustainable fuels.
And while many of the new tools provide an overview of massive global challenges, some are much more local. According to Nelson, you don't need scientific knowledge to understand the impact of wildfires, droughts, sinkholes or floods. "There are places in the country, and represented in the halls of government, that are going to be very resilient, so we have to tell the story," he stressed. "We have to educate people, and unfortunately, more and more, all these disasters are helping us do that."
Nearly 2.5 million acres have burned in California so far this year, a number second only to 2020, the state's worst wildfire season on record. Entire cities have been destroyed by flames.
Some of NASA's tools can help identify where fires are located or embers are shooting out that could endanger firefighters and spark new flames, officials said. Others may employ sophisticated radar systems in disaster areas to assess damage and assist first responders.
JPL Earth director of science and technology Jim Graf noted that they can also fly over the 1,100-mile levee system in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to quickly identify subsidence or weakness. That information could help officials make decisions about critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts.
Officials on Thursday also showed off its NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR, satellite, which is still under construction and will "provide an unprecedented view of Earth" when it launches in 2023, they said. The satellite will monitor the entire planet for disturbances in glaciers, volcanoes and other systems. “Essentially, it will use two radar instruments that will observe changes in the Earth's surface,” explained Susan Owen McCollum, associate project scientist for NISAR. "That can really tell us a lot: how fast the ice sheets are melting, how fast the ground is moving."
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Another aspect of the radar will allow officials to monitor how forest biomass is changing through carbon sequestration or other processes, McCollum said, which could be essential for studying places like the Amazon. “Radar is a powerful imaging tool: it sees the Earth in a different way,” she noted.
But NASA and JPL haven't lost sight of the final frontier either, and officials on Thursday offered a tour of the Mars Perseverance control room. The rover, which landed on Mars in February, is collecting rock samples that will be brought back to Earth for further study.
The Ingenuity helicopter, which arrived with the rover, has also completed more than a dozen flights, they said, demonstrating for the first time that powered, controlled flight is possible on another planet.
However, while the challenges of space exploration may seem like a world apart from those found here on Earth, Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley said much can be learned from the red planet. Some of the rocks his team is studying are 3.5 billion years old and come from a time when liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars.
There is no liquid water on the Martian surface today, he added, and essentially no atmosphere. "It's an example of massive climate change, from a planet that we think would have been habitable to a planet that, at least on the surface, is not," Farley added. “It is a clear example that the climate changes, and it can change enormously.”
Nelson, the NASA administrator, echoed those sentiments when he addressed the rover's control team. "That's one of the profound things that I think happens to every person who's had the privilege of looking out the window of a spacecraft orbiting the Earth," he said. "You see how beautiful she is, but also how fragile."
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