A King Air B200 aircraft from NASA's Langley
Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, seen here in an undated file image, will
gather pollution data from up to 27,000 feet.
Image Credit:
NASA/Suzanne Crumeyrolle
Two NASA aircraft are participating in field campaigns beginning this month in Colorado that will probe the factors leading to unhealthy air quality conditions and improve the ability to diagnose air quality conditions from space.
The NASA aircraft will be joined by a research aircraft from the National
Science Foundation (NSF) for flights July 16 to Aug. 16 from the Research
Aviation Facility maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.
The main study area extends along the Northern Front Range from the Denver
metropolitan area in the south to Fort Collins in the north extending eastward
from the mountains as far as Greeley. This area contains a diverse mixture of
air pollution sources that include transportation, power generation, oil and gas
extraction, agriculture, natural vegetation and episodic wildfires.
The region being studied often experiences ozone levels in summer that exceed
national health standards. Ground-level ozone is chemically produced from the
combination of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbon emissions in sunlight.
NASA’s contribution to the effort is called DISCOVER-AQ, which stands for
Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved
Observations Relevant to Air Quality. The Colorado study is the final stop in a
series of four field studies by the DISCOVER-AQ team focused on areas across the
United States that routinely experience poor air quality. Previous flights
focused on the Baltimore-Washington area (2011), California’s San Joaquin Valley
(2013), and Houston (2013).
In each study location, DISCOVER-AQ joined with state and local air quality
agencies and local universities to implement a comprehensive observing strategy
to obtain a three-dimensional view of air pollution over the area. Flights are
being closely coordinated with air quality observations on the ground at sites
maintained by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
These detailed observations of air pollution from the surface up into the
atmosphere will help improve the capability of future satellites to monitor air
quality around the world.
“Satellites looking down through the atmosphere have a difficult time
distinguishing between pollution at the surface and aloft," said DISCOVER-AQ Jim
Crawford from NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “The
‘vertically resolved’ observations gathered by the two NASA planes flying one
above the other and above the ground sites offer the details needed to better
understand how to connect these two views.”
NASA's King Air from Langley will fly at 27,000 feet, looking downward with
remote sensors to measure the amount of gaseous and particulate pollution below
the aircraft. The NASA P-3B from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops
Island, Virginia, will sample the vertical distribution of gaseous and
particulate pollution by profiling from 1,000 and 15,000 feet above the surface
over selected monitoring sites on the ground.
Additional instruments at these ground sites will measure pollution more
completely than is typically feasible and to provide continuous monitoring of
air quality conditions aloft using remote sensors, balloons, and towers at some
locations.
For the Colorado flights, the DISCOVER-AQ mission is collaborating with a
second study, the Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Experiment or
FRAPPE. Jointly sponsored by the state of Colorado and NSF, FRAPPE will include
the NCAR/NSF C-130 research aircraft, as well as additional activities on the
ground.
While the DISCOVER-AQ aircraft will be dedicated to sampling over ground
sites, FRAPPE will have much more freedom to direct the C-130 to different
locations as conditions warrant. This includes flying upwind of the Front Range
area to distinguish between local pollutants and those carried in from outside
the state, and flying downwind to assess chemical evolution and impacts of
pollutants leaving the region.
Another priority will be to target specific pollution sources in the Front
Range area, ranging from the urban emissions in the Denver metropolitan area to
the agricultural emissions centered in the Greeley area and the broad region of
oil and gas extraction activity extending to the northeast of Denver.
The combined studies will produce an unprecedented level of detail for
understanding air quality over a metropolitan area.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has collaborated with NASA
throughout the four DISCOVER-AQ campaign locations. In Denver, the EPA will add
air monitoring instruments to the Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment’s Health Alert Network to measure nitrogen dioxide, an important
ozone precursor not currently observed at many locations along the Front Range.
EPA and others also are evaluating small air quality sensors distributed
throughout the network with the potential for widespread use by individuals to
monitor personal air quality exposure.
The data gathered this summer and by previous DISCOVER-AQ flights will be
used to assess and improve air quality models, design more effective observing
strategies for ground networks, and inform the design of planned satellite
observations from geostationary orbit. NASA is developing plans for the
Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) mission that will
provide hourly air quality observations over North America from an orbit more
than 20,000 miles from Earth.
“What we learn from these flights will help us to better interpret satellite
remote sensing of air quality from geostationary orbit in the future," said
Crawford. "It also will help us to define the best combination of instruments on
the ground to connect air quality monitoring networks with satellite
information.”
Journalists who want to take part in a media day from 10 a.m. to noon MDT
Tuesday, July 15 should contact Michael Finneran at michael.p.finneran@nasa.gov or
David Hosansky, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, at hosansky@ucar.edu. for access to the
Research Aviation Facility in Broomfield, Colorado. Researchers and aircraft
will be on hand for interviews, photos and video. The facility is located at the
Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.
For more information on DISCOVER-AQ and its partners, visit:
For more information on FRAPPE and its partners, visit:
NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of
satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA
develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems
with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our
planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global
community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world
that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014,
visit:
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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