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PACE-PAX: A Day in the Life of a NASA Field Campaign

2024.12.17

It’s a flight day for one of NASA’s most expansive and complex field campaigns.

The goal: to check the data collected from orbit by NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission. To do that, members of the PACE-PAX (PACE Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment) field campaign deployed two aircraft and a research ship from multiple locations in California over the duration of September 2024.

2024 Clarivate (Web of Science) Highly Cited Researchers

2024.11.19

Benjamin Cook (611), Joanna Joiner (614), Alexei Lyapustin (613), Doug Morton (618), Nima Pahlevan (619), and Ben Poulter (618) were selected as 2024 Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate (Web of Science). Recipients are recognized for their exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year.

WHyMSIE Campaign Completes Successful Flights

2024.11.01

A mid-wave IR Airborne Imager was successfully flown on NASA's ER-2 on Oct 18, 22 and 23, 2024, for the WHyMSIE campaign thanks to the team efforts of Dong Wu (613), Mariel Friberg (613/UMD), Matt Mclinden (612), Peter Pantina (612/SSAI), Skylar Hoffert (555), Murzy Jhabvala (550), Allen Lunsford (693/AmUniv), and Don Jennings (550/SSAI).

SCOAPE-II Completes Successful Campaign

2024.11.01

Aircraft measurements of the air pollutant nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were collected for the Satellite Coastal and Oceanic Atmospheric Pollutant Experiment 2 (SCOAPE-II Ryan Stauffer, 614) with the GeoCAPE Airborne Simulator instrument (GCAS PI Scott Janz, 614) on the NASA/LaRC B200 aircraft. SCOAPE-II is a NASA/Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) campaign to measure emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases from oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. The six flights conducted October 7–13, 2024, were supported by forecasts from Debra Kollonige (614/SSAI) and Niko Fedkin (614/NPP), GCAS operation by Zane McBride (618/SSAI), and coordination by Laura Judd (NASA/LaRC). GCAS measured dozens of NO2 plumes emitted from oil and gas platforms and support vessels, including while category 5 hurricane Milton was moving through the southern Gulf of Mexico.

GPM Captures Views of Hurricane Milton

2024.10.10

The NASA GPM outreach team worked with the Scientific Visualization Studio to produce a series of animations for the 4 overpasses that GPM captured of Hurricane Milton as it formed, rapidly intensified, and impacted Florida

Dr. Mian Chin Named Recipient of 2024 William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science

2024.10.03

We are thrilled to announce the selection of Dr. Mian Chin as the 2024 William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science recipient.

Dr. Chin is being recognized for for her pioneering work in developing and integrating models with remote sensing observations to understand aerosol sources, sinks, and their impacts on the Earth and its environment.

Dr. Chin is a Physical Scientist in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory, Code 614. She received a B.S. degree in chemistry from East China Normal University (Shanghai, China) in 1982, a M.A. degree in chemistry from Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana, U.S.A.) in 1986, and a Ph.D. degree in Atmospheric Sciences from Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.) in 1992. During her graduate studies at Georgia Tech, Mian was involved in field experiments measuring atmospheric constituents, laboratory studies determining atmospheric photochemical reaction rates and product yields, and one-dimensional photochemical modeling estimating the stratospheric sulfur budget. Between 1992 and 1995, Mian was a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Applied Sciences, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.), where she worked with 3-dimensional regional and global atmospheric chemistry and transport models for studying tropospheric ozone, aerosols, and trace gases. Mian was a Research Scientist at Universities Space Research Association from 1995 to 1997 and a Research Scientist/Senior Research Scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2003 before joining the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2003, concentrating on atmospheric model development and satellite data analysis. Her current research includes aerosol-cloud-chemistry-climate interactions, regional and global air quality, transport of aerosols and trace gases, aerosol impacts on global energy balance, and modeling and analysis of data from satellite, ground-based, and airborne observations. Mian has over 175 publications and is a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. She led the development of one of the first global aerosol models, GOCART, and the Chin et al. 2002 paper describing that model and its applications has received over 851 citations. GOCART remains a standard aerosol model used at NASA and elsewhere.

Notes from the Field: Twenty-one Hours a Day on 30-Foot Floating Science Lab

2024.09.24

Off the coast of southern California, a research team sails for science on the Research Vessel Blissfully. https://earthobserv

PACE Blog: NASA Pilots Use Specialty Suits to Validate Data

2024.09.24

Welcome to NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX). PACE-PAX uses the unique vantage point of the ER-2 aircraft to gather data on small particles in the atmosphere and ultimately help verify the data gathered by the satellite in orbit.

Notes from the Field: Sailing Away for PACE

2024.09.13

Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the ship operations for the PACE-PAX campaign are underway!

Notes from the Field: Day-in-the-Life of a PACE-PAX Mission Flight

2024.08.12

We are in the field supporting PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment), a multi-disciplinary mission that involves two aircraft—the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter—and several mobile ocean assets, all helping to validate observations and data products from NASA’s new satellite observation platform, PACE.

Precipitation Impacts from Hurricane Beryl

2024.07.16

The GES DISC published a Data-in-Action article "Precipitation Impacts from Hurricane Beryl." This article used Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) data to display the track of Beryl, including its interaction with Jamaica, coastal Texas, and all the way to Vermont, where its remnants caused significant flooding.

ALEGROS Flies Over East Coast

2024.06.28

June 17-22 the ALEGROS (Associating Local Emissions of Gases with Regional Observations from Satellites) team acquired high-density observation of air pollutants and greenhouse gases over the East Coast. Participants included Glenn Wolfe (614), Jason St. Clair (614/UMBC), Erin Delaria (614/UMD), Tom Hanisco (614), Bryan Place (614/SciGlob), Apoorva Pandey (614/UMBC), Jin Liao (614/UMBC), Steven Rosesmith (614/SciGlob) and Andrew Swanson (614/SciGlob). Glenn Wolfe discusses the campaign at CBS News, WUSA 9, The Baltimore Banner, and WHRO.

GOES-U Has Lift Off!

2024.06.25

On Tuesday, June 25th the GOES-U satellite successfully launched at 5:26 pm EDT.

GOES-U Satellite is Gearing Up for Launch

2024.06.21

Follow the progress on the NASA GOES-U blog. Launch is June 25, 2024.

GPM Ground Validation Continues

2024.06.07

The GPM GV group (Code 612/Wallops) completed its fourth winter deployment of instrumentation at the University of Connecticut. This year provided a total of 40 events (7 snow + 5 rain/snow + 28 rain). It was a relatively dry winter but our extension to spring months helped us to collect more rain events, including convective precipitation

ESD Scientists Support ARCSIX Campaign

2024.05.28

ESD scientists are in Pituffik, Greenland, or are participating remotely this month for the first Arctic Radiation-Cloud-Aerosol-Surface-Interaction Experiment (ARCSIX) aircraft campaign deployment. ARCSIX seeks to understand how coupling between radiative processes and sea ice surface properties influence summer sea ice melt, understand processes controlling the predominant Arctic cloud regimes and their properties, and improve our ability to monitor Arctic cloud, aerosol, radiation, and sea ice processes from space.

Happy 25th birthday, NASA’s Earth Observatory

2024.04.29

Since the launch of NASA’s Earth Observatory (EO) on April 29, 1999, the EO Group (613/SSAI) has published more than 18,000 image-driven stories, featuring everything from the newest satellite imagery to decades-long records of change. View a video highlighting 25 of our favorite images and data visualizations. The collection represents Earth’s diverse landscapes—deserts, mountains, oceans, and polar regions—along with depictions of human interaction with the environment.

Earth Day Toolkit Available

2024.04.18

NASA’s fleet of satellites see the whole Earth, every day. This year, you can celebrate Earth Day with NASA wherever you are! Host your own Earth Day event—supported by NASA science—with activities, demonstrations, handouts, posters, videos, and more.

GPM Ground Validation (GV) Activity

2024.04.05

Members of NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) GV team [David Wolff (612), GPM GV PI], the University of Connecticut, the Oklahoma State University (Gus Azevedo, PI), the Advanced Radar Research Center, and the Oklahoma NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) completed two deployments of a Weather Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) collocated with NASA’s GPM Atmospheric Instrumentation Laboratory (GAIL) trailer. There were 46 flights gathering profiles in challenging conditions of +35 mph wind during drizzle, rain, freezing rain, and snow events.

Lab Members Support ASIA-AQ Campaign

2024.04.05

The Code 614 In Situ Observations Lab recently participated in the Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality (ASIA-AQ). Participants from the lab include Glenn Wolfe (614), Jason St. Clair (614/UMBC), Erin Delaria (614/UMD), and Abby Sebol (614/UMD). The NASA DC-8 flew a comprehensive instrument suite to sample atmospheric composition in Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan. Observations will support efforts to improve Asian air quality and provide validation opportunities for geostationary and sun-synchronous satellite measurements of atmospheric composition, such as GEMS and OMI.

SED Scientists on Chasing the Eclipse

2024.03.29

Tom Colligan (618/UMD) and Jie Gong (613) discussed their work detecting atmospheric gravity waves during a total solar eclipse with NPR's podcast The Pulse.

Chasing the Eclipse

2024.03.29

Jie Gong (613) was interviewed, together with her colleague Jen Fowler (LaRC), by WHYY-FM about the upcoming National Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP). Jie discussed the science motivation behind the NEBP national campaign. The team will launch ~600 weather balloons and ~ 600 engineering balloons along the April 8th eclipse path to collect and analyze a valuable dataset to unveil transient atmospheric responses to this magnificent 3-minute shadow on Earth. The full podcast can be found here or search “Chasing the Eclipse” using Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

GPS World Features Research by Wu

2024.03.13

In a recent research report entitled “A Black Hole in Earth Science” appearing in GPS World, Dong Wu (613) found a significant loss of GNSS radio occultation (RO) data in 2023 over Europe and the Middle East, which is likely a result of the intensified electronic warfare used in Ukraine-Russia and the nearby conflict regions.

PACE Data Webinar Registration Open