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5 Min Read NASA Returns to Arctic Studying Summer Sea Ice Melt
NASA's Gulfstream III aircraft taxis on the runway at Pituffik Space Base as it begins one of its daily science flights for the ARCSIX mission. Credits: NASA/Gary Banziger What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and a new NASA mission is helping improve data modeling and increasing our understanding of Earth’s rapidly changing climate. Changing ice, ocean, and atmospheric conditions in the northernmost part of Earth have a large impact on the entire planet. That’s because the Arctic region acts like Earth’s air conditioner.
Much of the Sun’s energy is transported from tropical regions of our planet by winds and weather systems into the Arctic where it is then lost to space. This process helps cool the planet.
The NASA-sponsored Arctic Radiation Cloud Aerosol Surface Interaction Experiment (ARCSIX) mission is flying three aircraft over the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland to study these processes. The aircraft are equipped with instruments to gather observations of surface sea ice, clouds, and aerosol particles, which affect the Arctic energy budget and cloud properties. The energy budget is the balance between the energy that Earth receives from the Sun and the energy the Earth loses to outer space.
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This highlight video gives viewers a front row seat to a typical day on the ARCSIX mission from Pituffik Space Base as NASA's research scientists, instrument operators, and flight crews fly daily routes observing sea ice and clouds 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland.NASA/Gary Banziger “More sea ice makes that air conditioning effect more efficient. Less sea ice lessens the Arctic’s cooling effect,” says Patrick Taylor, a climate scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “Over the last 40 years, The Arctic has lost a significant amount of sea ice making the Arctic warm faster. As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts, it can cause ripple effects that impact weather conditions thousands of miles away, how fast our seas are rising, and how much flooding we get in our neighborhoods.”
As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts, it can cause ripple effects…thousands of miles away.
Patrick Taylor
NASA Climate Research Scientist
The first series of flights took place in May and June as the seasonal melting of ice started. Flights began again on July 24 during the summer season, when sea ice melting is at its most intense.
“We can’t do this kind of Arctic science without having two campaigns,” said Taylor, the deputy science lead for ARCSIX. “The sea ice surface in the spring was very bright white and snow covered. We saw some breaks in the ice. What we will see in the second campaign is less sea ice and sea ice that is bare, with no snow. It will be covered with all kinds of melt ponds – pooling water on top of the ice – that changes the way the ice interacts with sunlight and potentially changes how the ice interacts with the atmosphere and clouds above.”
Sea ice and the snow on top of the ice insulate the ocean from the atmosphere, reflecting the Sun’s radiation back towards space, and helping to cool the planet. Less sea ice and darker surfaces result in more of the Sun’s radiation being absorbed at the surface or trapped between the surface and the clouds.
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A pilot's view of Arctic sea ice from NASA's P-3 Orion aircraft during NASA's ARCSIX airborne science mission flights in June.NASA/Gary Banziger Understanding this relationship, and the role clouds play in the system, will help scientists improve satellite data and better predict future changes in the Arctic climate.
“This unique team of pilots, engineers, scientists, and aircraft can only be done by leveraging expertise from multiple NASA centers and our partners,” said Linette Boisvert, cryosphere lead for the mission from NASA’s Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We gathered great data of the snow and ice pre-melt and at the onset of melt. I can’t wait to see the changes at the height of melt as we measure the same areas covered with melt ponds.”
NASA partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder for the ARCSIX mission, and the research team found some surprises in their early data analysis from the spring campaign. One potential discovery is something Taylor is calling a “sea ice sandwich”, when a younger layer of sea ice is caught in between two layers of older sea ice. Scientists also found more drizzle within the clouds than expected. Both observations will need further investigating once the data is fully processed.
A research scientist monitors data measurements in-flight during the spring campaign of the ARCSIX mission.NASA/Gary Banziger “A volcano erupted in Iceland, and we believe the volcanic aerosol plume was indicated by our models four days later,” Taylor said. “Common scientific knowledge tells us volcanic particles, like ash and sulfate, would have already been removed from the atmosphere. More work needs to be done, but our initial results suggest these particles might live in the atmosphere much longer than previously thought.”
Previous studies suggest that aerosol particles in clouds can influence sea ice melt. Data collected during ARCSIX’s spring flights showed the Arctic atmosphere had several aerosol particle layers, including wildfire smoke, pollution, and dust transported from Asia and North America.
“We got everything we hoped for and more in the first campaign,” Taylor added. “The data from this summer will help us better understand how clouds and sea ice behave. We’ll be able to use these results to improve predictive models. In the coming years, scientists will be able to better predict how to mitigate and adapt to the rapid changes in climate we’re seeing in the Arctic.”
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Last Updated Jul 26, 2024 EditorCharles G. HatfieldContactCharles G. Hatfieldcharles.g.hatfield@nasa.govLocationLangley Research Center Related Terms
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4 min read NASA Mission Flies Over Arctic to Study Sea Ice Melt Causes
Article 2 months ago 5 min read Antarctic Sea Ice Near Historic Lows; Arctic Ice Continues Decline
Article 4 months ago 4 min read NASA Ice Scientists Take Flight from Greenland to Study Melting Arctic Ice
Article 2 years ago View the full article
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By NASA
5 Min Read Watch Carbon Dioxide Move Through Earth’s Atmosphere
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move orbits Earth from a distance. Credits:
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio Earth (ESD) Earth Home Explore Climate Change Science in Action Multimedia Data For Researchers What we’re looking at:
This global map shows concentrations of carbon dioxide as the gas moved through Earth’s atmosphere from January through March 2020, driven by wind patterns and atmospheric circulation.
Because of the model’s high resolution, you can zoom in and see carbon dioxide emissions rising from power plants, fires, and cities, then spreading across continents and oceans.
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move orbits Earth from a distance. Download this visualization from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5196 Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio “As policymakers and as scientists, we’re trying to account for where carbon comes from and how that impacts the planet,” said climate scientist Lesley Ott at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.”
You see here how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.
Lesley Ott
NASA Climate scientist
What are the sources of CO2?
Over China, the United States, and South Asia, the majority of emissions came from power plants, industrial facilities, and cars and trucks, Ott said. Meanwhile, in Africa and South America, emissions largely stemmed from fires, especially those related to land management, controlled agricultural burns and deforestation, along with the burning of oil and coal. Fires release carbon dioxide as they burn.
Why does the map look like it’s pulsing?
Global CO2 ppm for January-March of 2020. This camera move zooms in on the eastern United States. Download this visualization from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5196 Credits: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio There are two primary reasons for the pulsing: First, fires have a clear day-night cycle. They typically flare up during the day and die down at night.
Second, you’re seeing the absorption and release of carbon dioxide as trees and plants photosynthesize. Earth’s land and oceans absorb about 50% of carbon dioxide; these are natural carbon sinks. Plants take up carbon dioxide during the day as they photosynthesize and then release it at night through respiration. Notice that much of the pulsing occurred in regions with lots of trees, like mid- or high-latitude forests. And because the data were taken during the Southern Hemisphere summer, you see more pulsing in the tropics and South America, where it was the active growing season.
Some of the pulsing also comes from the planetary boundary layer — the lowest 3,000 feet (900 meters) of the atmosphere — which rises as the Earth’s surface is heated by sunlight during the day, then falls as it cools at night.
The data that drives it:
The map was created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using a model called GEOS, short for the Goddard Earth Observing System. GEOS is a high-resolution weather model, powered by supercomputers, that is used to simulate what was happening in the atmosphere — including storm systems, cloud formations, and other natural events. GEOS pulls in billions of data points from ground observations and satellite instruments, such as the Terra satellite’s MODIS and the Suomi-NPP satellite’s VIIRS instruments. Its resolution is more than 100 times greater than a typical weather model.
Ott and other climate scientists wanted to know what GEOS would show if it was used to model the movement and density of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere.
“We had this opportunity to say: can we tag along and see what really high-resolution CO2 looks like?” Ott said. “We had a feeling we were going to see plume structures and things that we’ve never been able to see when we do these coarser resolution simulations.”
Her instinct was right. “Just seeing how persistent the plumes were and the interaction of the plumes with weather systems, it was tremendous.”
Why it matters:
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/ Katie Jepson We can’t tackle climate change without confronting the fact that we’re emitting massive amounts of CO2, and it’s warming the atmosphere, Ott said.
Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas and the primary reason for Earth’s rising temperatures. As CO2 builds in the atmosphere, it warms our planet. This is clear in the numbers. 2023 was the hottest year on record, according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. Most of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade.
All this carbon dioxide isn’t harmful to air quality. In fact, we need some carbon dioxide to keep the planet warm enough for life to exist. But when too much CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere, the Earth warms too much and too fast. That’s what has been happening for at least the past half century. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased from approximately 278 parts per million in 1750, the beginning of the industrial era, to 427 parts per million in May 2024.
Read More: Emissions from Fossil Fuels Continue to Rise
Human activities have “unequivocally caused warming,” according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This warming is leading to all sorts of changes to our climate, including more intense storms, wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels.
Inside the SVS studio:
Carbon dioxide exists everywhere in the atmosphere, and the challenge for AJ Christensen, a senior visualization designer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was to show the differences in density of this invisible gas.
“We didn’t want people to get the impression that there was no carbon dioxide in these sparser regions,” Christensen said. “But we also wanted to really highlight the dense regions because that’s the interesting feature of the data. We were trying to show that there’s a lot of density over New York and Beijing.”
Data visualizations help people understand how Earth’s systems work, and they can help scientists find patterns in massive datasets, Ott said.
“What’s happening is you’re stitching together this very complex array of models to make use of the different satellite data, and that’s helping us fill in this broad puzzle of all the processes that control carbon dioxide,” Ott said. “The hope is that if we understand greenhouse gases really well today, we’ll be able to build models that better predict them over the next decades or even centuries.”
For more information and data on greenhouse gases, visit the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center.
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By NASA
NASA astronaut Andre Douglas poses for a portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.Credits: NASA/Josh Valcarcel NASA has selected astronaut Andre Douglas as its backup crew member for the agency’s Artemis II test flight, the first crewed mission under NASA’s Artemis campaign.
Douglas will train alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
In the event a NASA astronaut is unable to take part in the flight, Douglas would join the Artemis II crew.
“Andre’s educational background and extensive operational experience in his various jobs prior to joining NASA are clear evidence of his readiness to support this mission,” said Joe Acaba, chief astronaut at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “He excelled in his astronaut candidate training and technical assignments, and we are confident he will continue to do so as NASA’s backup crew member for Artemis II.”
The CSA announced Jenni Gibbons as its backup crew member in November 2023. Gibbons would step into the mission to represent Canada should Hansen not be available.
“Canada’s seat on the historic Artemis II flight is a direct result of our contribution of Canadarm3 to the lunar Gateway. Jenni Gibbons’ assignment as backup is of utmost importance for our country,” said CSA President Lisa Campbell. “Since being recruited, Jenni has distinguished herself repeatedly through her work with NASA and the CSA. She is also a tremendous role model for Canada’s future scientists, engineers, and explorers.”
The selection of Douglas and Gibbons as backup crew members for Artemis II is independent of the selection of crew members for Artemis III. NASA has not yet selected crew members for Artemis flights beyond Artemis II. All active NASA astronauts are eligible for assignment to any human spaceflight mission.
The approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight will launch on the agency’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.
More on Artemis II backup crew
Douglas graduated from NASA’s astronaut candidate training program in March 2024. He is a Virginia native and earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, as well as four post-graduate degrees from various institutions, including a doctorate in Systems Engineering from George Washington University in Washington. Douglas served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a naval architect, salvage engineer, damage control assistant, and officer of the deck. He also worked as a staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, working on maritime robotics, planetary defense, and space exploration missions for NASA. Douglas participated in the Joint EVA and Human Surface Mobility Test Team 5, working with a specialized group that develops, integrates, and executes human-in-the-loop tests, analog missions, and Moonwalks. Most recently, Douglas worked with teams on the development of the lunar terrain vehicle, pressurized rover, lunar Gateway and lunar spacesuit.
Gibbons was recruited as a CSA astronaut in 2017 and completed her basic training in 2020. Since then, Gibbons has continued to serve Canada’s space program and has worked in different positions, including Mission Control as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) during spacewalks, and commercial spacecraft and daily International Space Station operations. Gibbons holds an honors bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal. While at McGill, she conducted research on flame propagation in microgravity in collaboration with CSA and Canada’s National Research Council Flight Research Laboratory in Ontario. She holds a doctorate in engineering from Jesus College at the University of Cambridge, England.
Under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency is establishing the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon, land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.
Learn more about NASA’s Artemis campaign at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
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By NASA
6 Min Read First of Its Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image
The Serpens Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Alignment of bipolar jets confirms star formation theories
For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to directly image has been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). In this stunning image of the Serpens Nebula, the discovery lies in the northern area (seen at the upper left) of this young, nearby star-forming region.
Astronomers found an intriguing group of protostellar outflows, formed when jets of gas spewing from newborn stars collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. Typically these objects have varied orientations within one region. Here, however, they are slanted in the same direction, to the same degree, like sleet pouring down during a storm.
Image: Serpens Nebula (NIRCam)
In this image of the Serpens Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows within one small region (the top left corner). Serpens is a reflection nebula, which means it’s a cloud of gas and dust that does not create its own light, but instead shines by reflecting the light from stars close to or within the nebula. The discovery of these aligned objects, made possible due to Webb’s exquisite spatial resolution and sensitivity in near-infrared wavelengths, is providing information into the fundamentals of how stars are born.
“Astronomers have long assumed that as clouds collapse to form stars, the stars will tend to spin in the same direction,” said principal investigator Klaus Pontoppidan, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “However, this has not been seen so directly before. These aligned, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way that stars are born.”
So just how does the alignment of the stellar jets relate to the rotation of the star? As an interstellar gas cloud crashes in on itself to form a star, it spins more rapidly. The only way for the gas to continue moving inward is for some of the spin (known as angular momentum) to be removed. A disk of material forms around the young star to transport material down, like a whirlpool around a drain. The swirling magnetic fields in the inner disk launch some of the material into twin jets that shoot outward in opposite directions, perpendicular to the disk of material.
In the Webb image, these jets are signified by bright clumpy streaks that appear red, which are shockwaves from the jet hitting surrounding gas and dust. Here, the red color represents the presence of molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
“This area of the Serpens Nebula – Serpens North – only comes into clear view with Webb,” said lead author Joel Green of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “We’re now able to catch these extremely young stars and their outflows, some of which previously appeared as just blobs or were completely invisible in optical wavelengths because of the thick dust surrounding them.”
Astronomers say there are a few forces that potentially can shift the direction of the outflows during this period of a young star’s life. One way is when binary stars spin around each other and wobble in orientation, twisting the direction of the outflows over time.
Stars of the Serpens
The Serpens Nebula, located 1,300 light-years from Earth, is only one or two million years old, which is very young in cosmic terms. It’s also home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars (~100,000 years old), seen at the center of this image. Some of these stars will eventually grow to the mass of our Sun.
“Webb is a young stellar object-finding machine,” Green said. “In this field, we pick up sign posts of every single young star, down to the lowest mass stars.”
“It’s a very complete picture we’re seeing now,” added Pontoppidan.
So, throughout the region in this image, filaments and wisps of different hues represent reflected starlight from still-forming protostars within the cloud. In some areas, there is dust in front of that reflection, which appears here with an orange, diffuse shade.
This region has been home to other coincidental discoveries, including the flapping “Bat Shadow,” which earned its name when 2020 data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revealed a star’s planet-forming disk to flap, or shift. This feature is visible at the center of the Webb image.
Future Studies
The new image, and serendipitous discovery of the aligned objects, is actually just the first step in this scientific program. The team will now use Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) to investigate the chemical make-up of the cloud.
The astronomers are interested in determining how volatile chemicals survive star and planet formation. Volatiles are compounds that sublimate, or transition from a solid directly to a gas, at a relatively low temperature – including water and carbon monoxide. They’ll then compare their findings to amounts found in protoplanetary disks of similar-type stars.
“At the most basic form, we are all made of matter that came from these volatiles. The majority of water here on Earth originated when the Sun was an infant protostar billions of years ago,” Pontoppidan said. “Looking at the abundance of these critical compounds in protostars just before their protoplanetary disks have formed could help us understand how unique the circumstances were when our own solar system formed.”
These observations were taken as part of General Observer program 1611. The team’s initial results have been accepted in the Astrophysical Journal.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Science Paper: The science paper by J. Green et al., PDF (7.93 MB)
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hanna Braun hbraun@stsci.edu Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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