Proposed flights of the Global Hawk for the Global Hawk Pacific Mission (GloPac) are to be conducted in support of the Aura Validation Experiment (AVE). This mission will take place out of Dryden Flight Research Center and is expected to encompass the entire offshore Pacific region with four to five 30 hour flights. Aura is one of the A-train satellites supported by NASA Earth Observation System.
The flights are designed to address various science objectives:
The Costa Rica Aura Validation Experiment (CR-AVE) is a mission designed to explore the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) and to provide information for comparison to satellite observations. The tropical region between 30 N and 30 S comprises half of the Earth’s surface, yet is relatively unsampled in comparison to the mid-latitude of the Northern Hemisphere.
The Polar Aura Validation Experiment (PAVE) is a NASA international science mission to acquire critical high quality measurements of the polar region in support of the recently launched Aura satellite. PAVE is the third of a series of Aura Validation missions designed to provide correlative measurements to help understand the transport of gases and aerosols in the troposphere and their exchange with the lower stratosphere.
<p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; background-color: #ffffcc;">Under support from NASA/TRMM, a major ground validation program, known as TRMM/Brazil, will be carried out in Amazonia from 1 November 1998 to 28 February 1999. This program will focus on the dynamical, microphysical, electrical and diabatic heating characteristics of tropical convection in this region. Data collected in the program will be used in part to validate products from the TRMM satellite as it repeatedly overflies this region.
NASA is addressing the crucial scientific issue of global ozone depletion. A major airborne campaign was planned and executed in August and September of 1987 to study the sudden and unanticipated decrease observed in the abundance of ozone over Antarctica in the Austral spring since 1979. Results from that study have provided data which directly implicate man-made chemical compounds, chlorofluorocarbons, in the enormous ozone loss over this remote region in the southern hemisphere.
The Stratospheric-Troposphere Exchange Project (STEP) has two objectives:
A. Investigate the mechanism and rates of irreversible transfer of mass, trace gases, and aerosols from troposphere to stratosphere and within the lower stratosphere.
B. Explain the observed extreme dryness of the stratosphere
The Kwajalein Experiment, KWAJEX, is part of the Tropical Rain Measurement Mission, TRMM, whose goals include providing Ground Validation, GV, for instruments onboard the TRMM satelite launched in November of 1997. The KWAJEX field campaign is the only TRMM campaign designed to be conducted over the tropical open ocean.
The Convection And Moisture EXperiment (CAMEX) is a series of field research investigations sponsored by the Earth Science Enterprise of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The third field campaign in the CAMEX series (CAMEX-3) was based at Patrick Air Force Base , Florida from 6 August - 23 September, 1998. CAMEX-3 successfully studied Hurricanes Bonnie, Danielle, Earl and Georges.
Impacts of Climate on the Eco-Systems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment (ICESCAPE) is a multi-year NASA shipborne project. The bulk of the research will take place in the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea’s in the summers of 2010 and 2011.
The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment was a NASA Earth science field experiment in 2010 that was conducted to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes.
NASA is establishing a new science field campaign in 2009 to study sea ice roughness and break-up in the Arctic and high northern latitudes. This mission, known as CASIE-09 (Characterization of Arctic Sea Ice Experiment 2009), is being conducted under the auspices of the International Polar Year (IPY), a major international scientific research effort. The principal investigator, Dr.
Many facets of the chemical, dynamic, and physical processes occurring in the tropical upper troposphere and tropopause transitional layer are not well understood. Identifying the key processes in this region is essential for progress on issues involving global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and global tropospheric chemistry.
The Aura Validation Experiment (AVE) is a series of fields campaigns using aircraft and balloon flights to gather local atmospheric data which be used to validate remote measurements taken from the Aura satellite. The first campaign in the validation series took place in October 2004 with a series of flights from the WB-57F High-Altitude Research aircraft.
The Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment (INTEX-NA) is a major NASA science campaign to understand the transport and transformation of gases and aerosols on transcontinental and intercontinental scales and their impact on air quality and climate. A particular focus in this study is to quantify and characterize the inflow and outflow of pollution over North America.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities warm our climate. Two effects of this warming are the increase of clouds and the rise of water vapor in the atmosphere. Both of these in turn influence the impacts of the man-made gases on global warming. Clouds can reflect the sun rays away from the surface, cooling the climate, but they also act as “blankets,” trapping sun’s radiative heat. These various interactions are complex and not fully understood.
The sudden onset of ozone depletion in the Antarctic vortex set a precedent for both the time scale and the severity of global change. The AIRBORNE ANTARCTIC OZONE EXPERIMENT (AAOE) staged from Punta Arenas, Chile, in 1987, established that CFCs and Halons are the source of chlorine and bromine radicals that, in turn, control the rate of ozone destruction, that the vortex is depleted in nitrogen oxides, reactive nitrogen, and water vapor and that diabatic cooling during the antarctic winter leads to subsidence within the vortex core importing air from higher altitudes and lower latitudes.
Recent observations have shown since 1979 a dramatic and unexpected downward trend in the overhead column abundance of ozone during late winter and early spring over Antarctica, at the Halley Bay and Argentine Islands stations (76 degrees S, 27 degrees W and 65 degrees S, 64 degrees W). The reduction, amounting by 1985 to about 40% of the historical October monthly mean, has been confirmed and given a geographically mapped perspective by observations from NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on Nimbus 7.
SUbsonic aircraft: Contrail & Clouds Effects Special Study (SUCCESS)
ESPO supported the NOAA-led Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment (GasEx), which was conducted on the Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown in the South Atlantic Ocean in 2008. ESPO provided management and logistic support to the NASA-funded scientific investigators on the mission. The NASA portion of the GasEx mission was under the direction of Dr. Paula Bontempi, the Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry Program Manager in NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
INTEX-NA is a two phase experiment that aims to understand the transport and transformation of gases and aerosols on transcontinental/intercontinental scales and assess their impact on air quality and climate. The primary constituents of interest are ozone and its precursors, aerosols and precursors, and the long-lived greenhouse gases.
The Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology, or ERAST program was a NASA program to develop cost-effective, slow-flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can perform long-duration science missions at altitudes above 60,000 feet. The project included a number of different technology development programs which were conducted by the joint NASA-industry ERAST Alliance.
The TExas and FLorida UNderflights (TEFLUN) Experiment is a mission to obtain validation measurements for the Tropical Rain Measuring Mission (TRMM). TRMM is a NASA and National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) coordinated mission that launched the TRMM satellite on 28 November 1997 with a unique complement of sensors to remotely observe rainfall throughout the global tropics. TEFLUN is the first in a series of experiments using a combination of airborne and surface-based measurements to complement the satellite data.
The primary goal of the Stratospheric Tracers of Atmospheric Transport (STRAT) campaign is the measurement of the morphology of long-lived tracers and dynamical quantities as functions of altitude, latitude, and season in order to help determine rates for global-scale transport and future distributions of high-speed civil transport (HSCT) exhaust emitted into the lower stratosphere. The observations will also improve understanding of broader issues involving transport of gases and aerosols in the stratosphere.
The Airborne Southern Hemisphere Ozone Experiment (ASHOE) is designed to examine the causes of ozone loss in the Southern Hemisphere lower stratosphere and to investigate how the loss is related to polar, mid-latitude, and tropical processes. ASHOE will be conducted in concert with the campaign, Measurements for Assessing the Effects of Stratospheric Aircraft (MAESA), whose focus is to provide information about stratospheric photochemistry and transport forassessing the potential environmental effects of stratospheric aircraft.
The Arctic is a beacon of global change. It is where warming has been strongest over the past century, accelerating over the past decades. It is an atmospheric receptor of pollution from the northern mid-latitudes continents, as manifested in particular by thick aerosol layers ("arctic haze") and by accumulation of persistent pollutants such as mercury.
IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. These flights will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behavior of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.
The Aura Validation Experiment (AVE) is a series of fields campaigns using aircraft and balloon flights to gather local atmospheric data which be used to validate remote measurements taken from the Aura satellite. The first campaign in the validation series takes place in October 2004 with a series of flights from the WB-57F High-Altitude Research aircraft.
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.
Some of the major science questions to be addressed by MACPEX will include:
The SAGE III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment (SOLVE) is a measurement campaign designed to examine the processes controlling ozone levels at mid- to high latitudes. Measurements will be made in the Arctic high-latitude region in winter using the NASA DC-8 and ER-2 aircraft, as well as balloon platforms and ground-based instruments. The mission will also acquire correlative data needed to validate the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) III satellite measurements that will be used to quantitatively assess high-latitude ozone loss.
The impact of subsonic aircraft emissions on tropospheric NOx and ozone budgets has been studied at a preliminary level with models that focus on upper tropospheric chemistry and are acknowledged to be limited with respect to treatment of transport and the tropospheric NOx budget [Brasseur et al, 1996].
The Photochemistry of Ozone Loss in the Arctic Region In Summer (POLARIS) is the latest in a series of high-altitude airborne investigations of atmospheric ozone spanning more than a decade. The objective of POLARIS is to understand the behavior of polar stratospheric ozone as it changes from very high concentrations in spring down to very low concentrations in autumn.
Southeast Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study (SEAC4RS) will take place in August and September of 2013. This deployment will address key questions regarding the influence of Asian emissions on clouds, climate, and air quality as well as fundamental satellite observability of the system. Science observations will focus specifically on the role of the Asian monsoon circulation and convective redistribution in governing upper atmospheric composition and chemistry.
Despite its low concentration, stratospheric water vapor has large impacts on the earth’s energy budget and climate. Recent studies suggest that even small changes in stratospheric humidity may have climate impacts that are significant compared to those of decadal increases in greenhouse gases. Future changes in stratospheric humidity and ozone concentration in response to changing climate are significant climate feedbacks.
The SAFARI 2000 (S2K) Project was an international science initiative to study the linkages between land and atmosphere processes in the southern African region. In addition, SAFARI 2000 examined the relationship of biogenic, pyrogenic, and anthropogenic emissions and the consequences of their deposition to the functioning of the biogeophysical and biogeochemical systems.
The NASA High Speed Research Program (HSRP) is charged with assessing by 1995 the environmental impact of a projected fleet of high-speed civil transports (HSCT's, a commercial supersonic aircraft fleet). The Atmospheric Effects of Stratospheric Aircraft Program (AESA) was established within the HSRP to prepare an assessment of the chemical perturbations to the atmosphere caused by HSCT emissions.
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.
Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX) will perform a series of measurement campaigns using the long-range NASA Global Hawk (GH) unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to investigate:
