14 DAY TRIAL // In 2013 and 2014, three locations above the Pacific Ocean will receive the visit of the NASA Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX). The multi-year science mission's goal is to analyze the chemical composition of the air currently making its way into the tropopause.
Other factors, such as humidity, will also be taken into account in this research, the team behind ATTREX reveals. Understanding how air moves in this layer of the atmosphere, and how it influences other processes, is essential to figuring out how these phenomena will influence the world's climate.
Before deploying the airborne science expedition, NASA had to conduct a series of test flights, whose role is to set the stage for the deployment of the larger scientific fleet. These flights were completed successfully, between October 20 and November 10.
The reason why experts decided to conduct ATTREX in the first place was that changes in stratospheric humidity are very important to Earth's climate. In fact, they have similar levels of importance in influencing planetary warming as the greenhouse gases humans release into the atmosphere.
“These were test flights, although we did get science-quality data, including samples from tropical thin cirrus clouds at about 55,000 feet altitude. These clouds regulate water vapor in the lower tropical stratosphere, which is important for Earth's radiation balance,” Leonhard Pfister explains.
The expert, who holds an appointment as the deputy principal investigator of the ATTREX mission, is based at the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), in Moffett Field, California. The test flights were conducted above the Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB), also in California.
The reason why investigators had to carry them out in the first place was to assess the performances of a complex suite of 11 scientific instruments. All were installed aboard one of the two Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) NASA operates.
Experts from four NASA centers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), three universities and the private industry are conducting ATTREX.
The investigation may very well lead to discovering previously unknown natural processes occurring in the tropopause, which may be modified in order to decrease their influence on global warming. In other words, they could be used in geoengineering schemes.
ATTREX will begin in January 2013, and will be reiterated in January and June 2014. The mission is part of the NASA Earth System Science Pathfinder program.