Month: August 2022

NASA’s Summer Storm Research Is Flying Into The Next Stage

A small aircraft coming in for landing at sunset.
NASA’s ER-2 landing after a day spent flying above thunderstorms for the DCOTSS field campaign. Credit: NASA/Cameron Homeyer

By Jude Coleman

A low, surging wind picks up as the first few raindrops splatter onto dusty ground. Dense cumulonimbus clouds, like soot-stained cotton balls, knot tighter and tighter in the sky. While the thick scent of petrichor and ozone invades the air, an electric burst of lightning slashes through the sky; deafening cracks of thunder follow, like the footsteps of some celestial giant crashing through the atmosphere.

Summer thunderstorms like this may last just a few minutes, or for several hours. In their wake, the NASA Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere, or DCOTSS, operations room buzzes with activity. After a storm, the Kansas-based crew sends out a high-altitude plane loaded with instruments to take measurements and make observations.

In a process called convection, thunderstorms’ roiling activity draws up warm air from the lower atmosphere and cools it as it travels higher, sometimes shooting it into the next atmospheric layer above called the stratosphere. The DCTOSS team aims to figure out exactly what material swirling in the air gets transferred between atmospheric layers when this happens.

“Until this mission, nobody had ever tried to do this,” said Ken Bowman, DCOTSS principal investigator. “There haven’t been direct observations to tell us how this happens or how important it is.” Bowman and his crew completed their final fight in July, and are now back at in the lab to begin sorting through the data they’ve collected.

View out of the cockpit of the ER-2 cockpit while in flight. The view looks down on fluffly clouds below and the deep blue sky is above.
The view from the ER-2. Credit: NASA/Greg Nelson

For the last two summers, DCOTSS team meteorologists kept their eyes peeled for thunderstorms in North America, which is a global hotspot for thunderstorms that overshoot air into the stratosphere. When a storm erupted, the team had to estimate if and where the storm’s plume would overshoot and air at the top of the storm would mix with stratospheric air, called the storm’s outflow. While the meteorologists used radars and satellites to direct the pilot of NASA’s high altitude Earth Research or ER-2 aircraft to the storm outflow, scientists closely monitored water vapor measurements aboard the aircraft. A spike in water vapor indicated that the plane had entered the outflow plume.

“There’s definitely been some cheering,” said Kate Smith, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Miami who works with instruments aboard the ER-2. “It’s really kind of amazing that they’re able to predict where [it’s] going to happen.”

The rapid updrafts in thunderstorms can push all kinds of material into the stratosphere, including water vapor and pollutants from both man-made and natural sources. Because the stratosphere has its own delicate chemistry, chemicals from the lower atmosphere could alter it, explained Smith. For example, some compounds can wreak havoc on the atmosphere as they break down and interact with the fragile ozone layer that protects Earth from the Sun’s harmful radiation.

Though scientists have known storms overshoot in the stratosphere, little is known about their interactions with the climate. Some compounds such as water vapor and methane are strong greenhouse gases and contribute to global warming. It’s important to understand their role in the atmosphere to predict how it will change in the future due to human-caused climate change, explains Bowman.

A shot of the underside and instrument pod under the wing, near the body of the aircraft.
Preparing the ER-2 for flight during the DCoTSS field campaign in Salina Kansas, July 2022. To the right in the image, under the wing is a pod that carries science instruments. credit: NASA/ Darick Alvarez-Alonzo

One instrument pivotal to those predictions is the Advanced Whole Air Sampler: a manifold of 32 canisters that collects air samples as the plane flies. The AWAS measures 50 different compounds, including carbon monoxide, methane, hydrocarbons, molecules made up of only hydrogen and carbon, and halocarbons, molecules that contain halogen atoms such as chlorine and bromine.

The halogen-containing gases break down and produce radicals, a kind of free-roaming atom that can destroy the ozone layer, explains Smith, who is part of the AWAS team. Smith and her colleagues are particularly interested in short-lived compounds that typically wouldn’t make it into the stratosphere on their own.

“Because of this chimney type process, where [the storm] shoots them up fast, we can identify and detect some of these species in the lower stratosphere,” added Smith.

Another instrument collecting short-lived compounds is the Compact Airborne Formaldehyde Experiment (CAFE) from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which measures levels of formaldehyde with a laser-based technique. Formaldehyde measurements help tease apart how air is transported into the stratosphere since only freshly transported air will have formaldehyde in it.

Both CAFE and AWAS will contribute vital information to the mission, but they are just two of a dozen total instruments the team depends on.

“They’re like your children, you know? You love them all equally,” said Bowman.

With the flights finished and the ER-2 back in the hangar, the next phase of the mission is analyzing all the collected data. While the team sampled around 20 storms during their deployment, hundreds more occurred that weren’t sampled. The first step in their analysis will be to use their data to make models that estimate how much collective material thunderstorms eject into the stratosphere. Then, they can start unraveling what that material does when it gets there—advancing NASA’s understanding of Earth’s climate and preparing for the changes ahead.

 

 

Student Scientists Flying High

Six students pose in front of the P-3 aircraft.
Posing with friends in front of the P3 Orion before boarding Photo Credit: Raffa

by Deb Hernandez

A handful of college students recently got to fly through the skies over the Mid-Atlantic as part of a NASA airborne science program.

Freshman and sophomore students from minority-serving institutions joined NASA researchers on a P-3 aircraft based at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, as part of the Students Airborne Science Activation (SaSa) program coordinated by the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Carrying instruments that collect atmospheric data, the five flights from July 5-16 followed various paths along the I-95 corridor from Baltimore to Hampton, Virginia, as well as over the Chesapeake Bay.

Several SaSa students wrote personal blogs about their experiences, which are excerpted as quotes in the narrative here.

In the cockpit of an aircraft a woman facing away from the camera sits behind the pilots with headphones on, looking out hte windows.
Neima Dedefo sitting in the flight deck and looking out over the Chesapeake Bay. (Credit: Daniel Harrison (Fellow SaSa Intern))

Flying at altitudes between 1,000 and 10,000 feet – which included low-level passes and several spiral tracks on each outing – had some of the students a little nervous.

“I didn’t know what to expect from my first non-commercial flight. All I knew was that the flight had valuable data related to my research, and all I had to do was endure the spirals to get it,” wrote Neima Dedefo, an aviation science major at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.

Dedefo picked the lucky number before takeoff and got to sit next to the pilot during one of the flights. “I sat up front, with the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins. Listening to the pilots communicate with Air Traffic Control (ATC), looking at the view from my window was a solidifying moment for my career,” she noted.

A woman stands next to the beige, curved interior wall of the P-3 hold a rectangular-folded paper air sikness bag.
Trisha poses with her motion sickness bag before takeoff. Credit: Neima Dedefo

Trisha Joy Francisco, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said she was so excited for the flight she asked the program manager to put her on the first flight.

“Everyone was required to be in the hangar by 9 a.m. sharp for the flight briefing,” Francisco recalled. “Our task as students was to listen, observe and ask questions to gain a better understanding of being in the airborne science field. Watching the discussion felt surreal to me. It felt like I was in an episode of Star Trek watching the officers plan for their missions.”

Francisco said the flight day “was filled with anticipation” because the weather forecast the night before had been for stormy skies.

A view out of the aircraft window of fields and trees in greem and then the stark line of the horizon, blue with fluffly clouds.
Flying over Wallops Flight Facility in the NASA P-3 (Credit: NASA SaSa/Vanessa Hua)

“7:45 a.m. – that was the moment to ultimately decide if our last airborne science flights were going to take place,” explained Stephanie M. Ortiz Rosario, a physics and atmospheric sciences major at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. “Pilots, scientists, students, and coordinators gathered at the conference table in the hangar to listen to the information that would influence their decision: the weather briefing.

“And there was me, the one in charge of delivering the forecast,” she said.

“As my first time doing it for the team in real time, it was a nerve-wracking moment, especially knowing that the data I brought in was critical for their decision, and I needed to provide it as clearly as possible,” Rosario said. “The reality is that I was ready to do it. My mentors have been incredible in helping me build up my forecasting and science communications skills. It was the perfect time to showcase myself as a future atmospheric scientist. I just needed to take a deep breath and step in with confidence.

“After what seemed like the most terrifying 3 minutes of my life, I felt the overwhelming support of the team, with their applause and comments. I instantly knew how happy I was to accept the challenge to deliver the weather briefing and see that as a student, my knowledge was useful and appreciated in NASA,” Rosario wrote.

A woman int he center of the photo poses with a small NASA aircraft in the hangar.
Vanessa Hua learning more about the various aircrafts flown by NASA at the Langley Research Center Hangar (Credit: NASA SaSa/Michelle García)

Vanessa Vuong Hua, an environmental studies major with a concentration in atmospheric sciences, University of California, Riverside, did research on trace gases and their impact on the atmospheric chemistry of cities. She was motivated by her concern for her hometown of Riverside, California. “I am no stranger to the poor air quality that plagues the city on a regular basis,” she noted.

“My journey through STEM has been a flight full of missed approaches, spirals, and cruising,” Hua related. “While my destination is not certain, I know without a doubt that environmental science will always be a field I would love to contribute to. In a world where degradation and climate change are occurring at a rate faster than we can prevent it, scientific intervention is more needed than ever. Flying on the P-3 Orion has served to further solidify my passion for atmospheric science and giving back to communities in need of environmental justice.”

Two students sit next two each other in airplane seats inside the P-3 aircraft.
Romina Cano (left) and Sophia Ramirez (right) buckled up and ready for take off! Credit: Sophia Ramirez

Sophia Ramirez, a biology major from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, has known since middle school that she wanted to follow a career path in science. She noted that “taking off for a flight in a STEM career can be difficult as a first-generation student with little knowledge of resources, guidance, and representation in the desired field.”

“Fast-forward, and I am now in my seat, buckled up, headset on, and ready for take-off,” Ramirez wrote. “As the pilots and head scientist used the headsets to ask each scientist if their instrument was ready to commence take-off, I had a flashback of teachers taking attendance in class. But, instead of doing so to begin class for the day, it was done to begin a flight that would collect atmospheric and Earth data that can be used for research projects and potentially to educate all students of the world about atmospheric processes conditions.”

Ramirez continued, “Throughout the flight, I felt my dreams of becoming a scientist become more tangible, as I saw the science happening in front of me. As I was immersed in science myself. Although I could not take steps with a feeling of stability as I walked down the aisle of the plane, I felt a stability in my career as a woman in STEM.”

A woman in a blue hat and sleeveless top stands in a boat with the blue green water of the Chesapeake and the horizon with a clear sky int he background.
Camila Hernández Pedraza. Boat trip at The Chesapeake Bay on July 1, 2022. Part of NASA SaSa program designed to collect water samples using the Multiparameter. (Credit: Trisha Joy Francisco/ SaSa student)

SaSa intern Camila Hernández Pedraza, a biology major at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey Campus, enjoyed a slightly different experience as she traversed the Chesapeake Bay via boat to collect data for her research.

“As an intern in the SaSa program, I enjoy researching, studying, and increasing my understanding of how anthropogenic and natural climate change impacts life,” she wrote. “The most gratifying moment was being able to analyze and relate our findings with my previous studies in biology and chemistry.”

Although she was having a good time and learning as much as she could about water quality, Pedrazza got hit by a rough bout of motion sickness.

“After the boat had docked, I found myself using ice packs and wet towels, while laying at a restaurant with air conditioner and telling myself that everything was going to be okay,” she recalled. “I knew becoming a scientist would be challenging, but I also knew that discovery and answers would be worth it. Despite the tribulations, I strive to thrive, because this is what I love.”