- 4354
- OCEAN STUDY
- what we can learn about our
planet? - On February 6, 2024, NASA
is scheduled to launch a major, multi-million dollar satellite to a reserved
spot in Earth's orbit. Sitting above even the International Space Station, the
spacecraft called ”PACE” ( Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) has a
very big goal to monitor our planet's health on an epic scale, starting from
deep within its vast blue seas to far across its white clouds.
------------- 4354 - OCEAN STUDY - what we can learn about our planet?
- PACE is
the search for the “microscopic”, mostly invisible, universe in the sea,
and in the sky, and, in some degrees, on land.
-
- Liftoff is scheduled to take place February
6, 2024. The spacecraft will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from
Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The PACE mission can be divided
into two overarching categories; the first has to do with Earth's massive,
cavernous oceans.
-
- The oceans are 70% of our planet. The impact the oceans have on our lives is
enormous, and yet, the oceans are one of the least well-understood parts of the
Earth.
-
-
To really put this into perspective, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we have only explored a mere 5% of the ocean. We've barely scratched the surface of what could be hidden in our own planet's waters. That means that 95 percent of our ocean is unknown.
-
- It not only provides food that we eat and
air that we breathe, but it helps regulate climate and weather. The ocean provides compounds used in
medicines and plays a part in the economy. Fisheries provide jobs. Even beaches
rely on the ocean. And, what better way
to study the ocean than from the vantage point of space?
-
- Boats cannot be everywhere all at once in
the ocean. It's a three-dimensional
fluid. One key goal of PACE is to
monitor the quantities and movements of underwater phytoplankton, which are
microscopic organisms that stand at the crux of marine ecosystem health.
-
- Phytoplankton sit at the base of the food
chain. And, like your standard plant, they create energy through
photosynthesis, taking in carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Put those
together, and this means phytoplankton control the way carbon moves through the
entire ecosystem.
-
- Some phytoplankton are actually harmful, and
can contaminate drinking water. Not only would contaminated water lead to a
slew of health impacts for anyone drinking that water, but it could force
fisheries and beaches to close down.
-
- If you were to accumulate every
phytoplankton and pile it up, and then compare it to all the biomass on land
plants, it comprises less than 1% of all of that. Yet, it is still a community of algae,
bacteria and plants in the ocean that are responsible for 50% of all the
production on Earth.
-
- From its 420-mile altitude, PACE is going to
figure out where the harmful phytoplankton are, where the good ones are, where
they're all moving and how that seems to be affecting people across the globe.
-
- It'll do search for sunlight, or photon,
interactions with the ocean as well as the land and atmosphere. Once those photons get either absorbed or
scattered, you can sort of reverse calculate to see what thing led to those
outcomes, different kind of phytoplankton look different.
-
- The other half of PACE's mission centers on
another core Earth element: Air,
aerosols and clouds. Aerosols
are extremely fine particles suspended in the air. We interact with them all
the time; you may recall the most recent aerosol to make headlines across the
United States, PM2.5.
-
- In June of 2023, New York City ranked as
having the worst air quality in the world. It was because smoke particles,
specifically PM2.5 (each particle is 2.5 microns or less in diameter) blew
across the nation from wildfires that occurred in Canada. Skyscrapers hid behind thick, yellowish smog
and even air filters couldn't quite stop the particles. Everyone's eyes were
glued to online, real-time air quality trackers.
-
- Day by day, climate change continues to
ramp up. 2023 officially ranked as the
hottest year documented with no downward trend in sight. We'll be needing to watch air quality levels
with greater scrutiny. The last 10 years
have been the warmest since modern record keeping began. PACE is it's going to give us a better
understanding of the exchange of carbon between the ocean and the atmosphere.
-
- Human-driven climate change, “global
warming” as a result of industrial greenhouse gases and other activities,
creates the right conditions for wildfires. PACE can help scientists track air
quality to determine where hotspots for bad air quality may be, or even better,
where they will be based on aerosol movements.
-
- If you ever take a long walk on the beach,
you take a deep breath and you get that tang in your nose, that's an
aerosol. Smoke; that's yet another type
of aerosol.
-
- Aerosols are believed to directly impact
cloud patterns and weather events. A lot
of hurricanes hit the U.S. from the Atlantic. What's at the other end of the
Atlantic? The Sahara Desert. Where a
lot of dust is coming off.
-
- As those dust particles heat up the
atmosphere while flying through dictate the way clouds are formed, including
storm clouds. Perhaps if we can understand this interaction, we'd be able to
predict those events quite early.
-
- PACE will be looking out for pigments that
can alert scientists to stress experienced by land vegetation. A lot of people are interested, from the
forest service, from other parts of the government, from other parts of the
world, how can we use PACE data to
understand where there is some sort of sickness in vegetation or in an
agricultural field.
-
- PACE is going to teach us about the oceans in
the same way that Webb is teaching us about the cosmos Missions like this you can only do from
space, show us our planet in a way that we can't see.
-
-
February 12, 2024 OCEAN
STUDY - learn about our planet? 4354
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Wednesday, February 14,
2024
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