NASA Gets Down to Earth with Globe-Spanning Campaigns
NASA is sending Earth scientists around the world in 2016 to study how our planet is changing.
NASA is sending  scientists around the world in 2016 - from the edge of the Greenland ice sheet  to the coral reefs of the South Pacific - to delve into challenging questions  about how our planet is changing and what impacts humans are having on it.While Earth  science field experiments are nothing new for NASA, the next six months will be  a particularly active period with eight major new campaigns taking researchers around  the world on a wide range of science investigations. The public is invited to  follow this journey of exploration online through NASA's social media channels  and the new Earth Expeditions web page, which will feature regular video,  photos and blog posts from these missions and other ongoing field activities."Combining the  long-term global view from space with detailed measurements from field experiments  is a powerful way of deciphering what's happening in our world," said Michael Freilich,  director of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "Scientists worldwide  use NASA Earth science field data together with satellite data and computer  models to tackle many of today's environmental challenges and  advance our knowledge of how the Earth works as a complex, integrated system."NASA uses the  vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet,  improve lives, and safeguard our future with a fleet of orbiting satellites and  instruments. To gain a more complete picture of how and why our planet is  changing, NASA also sponsors intensive field studies targeting critical science  issues that can benefit from a deeper look.The first of  the new projects, currently in the field, is an examination of the extent to  which the oceans around Greenland are melting the edges of the ice sheet from  below. The Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) team is now conducting its first  airborne survey of the ice edge around the entire coast of Greenland. This fall,  they will return to measure coastal water temperatures by dropping sensors into  the sea from a plane.Air quality is  the focus of the Korea U.S.-Air Quality (KORUS-AQ) campaign in South Korea,  which begins in May. This joint study between NASA and the Republic of Korea  will advance our ability to monitor air pollution from space, with coordinated  observations from aircraft, ground sites, ships and satellites.Also in May, the  North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) takes to the sea  and air for the second year to study how the world's largest plankton bloom  gives rise to small organic particles that influence clouds and climate.Throughout much  of this year, teams of scientists working on the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability  Experiment (ABoVE) will be in the tundra and forests of Alaska and northwestern  Canada investigating the role of climate in wildfires, thawing permafrost,  wildlife migration habits and insect outbreaks.In June, the  COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) project team will begin testing airborne  and in-water instruments in Hawaii to assess the condition of threatened coral-based  ecosystems. CORAL's next stop, in the fall, will be Australia's Great Barrier  Reef.Three airborne research campaigns will take to  the skies this summer, focusing on critical climate-related components of the  atmosphere. Flying tracks over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans thousands of  miles long, the team of the Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission will gather measurements  of more than 200 different chemical species from the ocean surface to approximately  seven miles (11 kilometers) high in the atmosphere to understand how the  movement and transformation of short-lived greenhouse gases, such as ozone and  methane, contribute to climate change.Focusing on the skies over the eastern half of  the United States, the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport - America (ACT-America)  research team will track the movement of atmospheric carbon to better  understand the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. Flights will originate  from Louisiana, Nebraska and Virginia.The  Observations of Clouds above Aerosols and their Interactions (ORACLES) study will  use airborne instruments to probe the impact on climate and rainfall of the  interaction between clouds over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean and smoke from massive  vegetation burning in southern Africa. A better understanding of how the smoke particles alter stratocumulus  clouds that play a key role in regional and global surface temperatures and  precipitation will help improve current climate models.KORUS-AQ and  ABoVE originated from NASA's ongoing research program in the Earth Science  Division. The other six new experiments are the latest in a series of  multi-year NASA Earth Venture Suborbital investigations selected in 2014. Earth  Venture projects provide the U.S. scientific community with regular  opportunities to accommodate new Earth science research priorities. Earth  Venture is part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program managed at the  agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for NASA's Science  Mission Directorate in Washington.To follow all the  NASA Earth Expeditions, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/earthexpeditionsor check out the  NASA Earth Expeditions blog at:Earth Expeditions blog