Twin NASA Satellites Ready to Help Gauge Earth’s Energy Balance

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Climate Change News

Earth,Earth Science,Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Information from the PREFIRE mission will illuminate how clouds and water vapor in the Arctic and Antarctic influence the amount of heat the poles radiate

Earth’s polar regions radiates much of the heat initially absorbed at the tropics out to space, mostly in the form of far-infrared radiation. Clouds in the Arctic — like these seen over a Greenland glacier — and Antarctic can trap far-infrared radiation on Earth, increasing global temperatures. into space.

This video gives an overview of the PREFIRE mission, which aims to improve global climate change predictions by expanding scientists’ understanding of heat radiated from Earth at the polar regions. NASA/JPL-Caltech One of the two shoebox-size CubeSats that make up NASA’s PREFIRE mission sits on a table at Blue Canyon Technologies. The company built the satellite bus and integrated the JPL-provided thermal infrared spectrometer instrument.Clouds and water vapor can trap far-infrared radiation on Earth, thereby increasing global temperatures — part of the greenhouse effect.

But clouds are notoriously difficult to study: They’re made up of microscopic particles that can move and change in a matter of seconds to hours. When it rains or snows, there’s a great reshuffling of water and energy that can alter the character of clouds entirely. These ever-changing factors complicate the task of realistically capturing cloud behavior in climate models, which try to project global climate scenarios.

 

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