The Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface, or AirMOSS, investigation will gather high-resolution measurements of root-zone soil moisture in representative areas of North American ecosystems, quantify the impact of variations in soil moisture on the estimation of regional carbon fluxes, and extrapolate the estimates of regional carbon fluxes to the North American continental scale.  AirMoss will use 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 Unmanned Air Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is a project jointly developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in which a synthetic aperture radar is being flight-validated on a Grumman Gulfstream G-III in a specially designed pod that will be interoperable with manned and unmanned aircraft. The modified G-III provides a platform to not only test and evaluate the new radar, but can also be used to gather scientific data for multiple geophysical studies.

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 Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment, or CARVE, mission is based in Alaska and is taking place in the spring, summer and early fall of 2012. CARVE will collect detailed measurements of important greenhouse gases on local to regional scales in the Alaskan Arctic and demonstrate new remote sensing and improved modeling capabilities to quantify Arctic carbon fluxes and carbon cycle-climate processes. Ultimately, CARVE will provide an integrated set of data for unprecedented experimental insights into Arctic carbon cycling. CARVE uses a NASA C-23 Sherpa.

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

Forest ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle by sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but also releasing carbon to the atmosphere upon decomposition. Currently, land imagers are able to provide important information on forest cover, extent, and condition, but knowing the 3-dimensional structure of vegetation is important for quantifying the amount of carbon stored in biomass. In an effort to develop new instruments for determining biomass structure, and to pave the way for future satellites such as DESDynI, the NASA P-3 is currently flying the ECO-3D mission over Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Florida.

The primary payload, DBSAR, collects Polarimetric and Interferometric SAR data to validate biomass estimates in order to advance our understanding of the carbon cycle. DBSAR will also help advance the use of SAR for ecosystems while informing scientists about the potential of digital beam forming technology to map tree heights, forest biomass, and land cover type.

As part of the August campaign, NASA will also fly two other instruments, the Slope Imaging Multi-polarization Photon-counting Lidar (SIMPL), and the Cloud Aerosol Radiometer (CAR). SIMPL is a multi-beam, micropulse, single photon ranging laser altimeter (Fig. 2) that will provide measurements of forest canopy structure with very high spatial resolution (Fig. 2) and two-color polarimetry data that can be used to differentiate stand types. CAR is an airborne multi-wavelength scanning radiometer that can measure spectral directional reflectance over uniform forests, homogenous clouds, and bright targets. During this deployment, CAR will be employed to derive the Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and the vegetation clumping Index.
 
Data collected with these instruments will be used to advance the development of algorithms for biomass estimation, and in particular, the lidar-radar fusion techniques to estimate biomass and vegetation structure. Of special interest, DBSAR’s InSAR phase coherence measurement of microwave scattering dispersion in forest canopies will be compared to the SIMPL canopy height and structure results. This assessment will be in preparation for the DESDynI mission, to ascertain if L-band phase coherence can be calibrated by lidar data to yield reliable mapping of vegetation height and thereby estimation of aboveground biomass.

The Mid-latitude Airborne Cirrus Properties Experiment (MACPEX) is an airborne field campaign to investigate cirrus cloud properties and the processes that affect their impact on radiation. Utilizing the NASA WB-57 based at Ellington Field, TX, the campaign will take place in the March / April 2011 timeframe. Science flights will focus on central North America vicinity with an emphasis over the DoE ARM SGP site in Oklahoma.