Is Europe an underestimated sink for carbon dioxide?

ESA - European Space Agency patch.

5 January 2015

A new study using satellite data suggests that Europe’s vegetation extracts more carbon from the atmosphere than previously thought.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the most important human-made greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Large areas of vegetation, such as forests, are considered carbon ‘sinks’ because they assist in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

European carbon uptake

Without the natural carbon cycle, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would be much higher and, consequently, the effects of global warming would be much larger.

Current knowledge about the European terrestrial biospheric carbon sink mostly comes from ‘inverse modelling’ studies using in situ measurements, and from inventories of biomass and ecosystem studies.

To determine the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by Europe’s vegetation, scientists from the University of Bremen analysed carbon dioxide concentration measurements from satellites.

The data were generated by the GHG-CCI  project under ESA's Climate Change Initiative, Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It included eight years of data from the Sciamachy instrument on ESA’s Envisat mission, and one year of data from Japan’s greenhouse gas-observing satellite, GOSAT.

Each satellite dataset was generated using a different method, ensuring that the results did not depend on a potential calculation problem specific to a single method. All calculations showed that Europe’s terrestrial vegetation – between the Atlantic Ocean and Ural mountains – absorbs about twice the amount of carbon per year more than previous estimates.

Average satellite carbon dioxide concentrations over Europe

The use of in situ carbon dioxide measurements in inverse modelling yielded similar results as measurements derived from biomass inventories. But the in situ stations are sparsely distributed across western Europe. Satellite measurements, however, cover the entire European continent and acquire spatially denser data.

“Our estimate is at the high end of the uncertainty range estimated by previous studies, which did not use any satellite carbon dioxide observations,” said Maximilian Reuter, lead author of the study.

“Using satellite data for this application is challenging, as even small measurement errors can result in significant errors of the strength of the inferred carbon source or sink. This is because the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is already quite high, so that even a large source or sink of carbon dioxide only results in a quite small relative change of the atmospheric carbon dioxide amount which we are measuring.”

The study was published recently in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/13739/2014/acp-14-13739-2014.html

Frederic Chevallier, a climate modeller working at France’s Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, and leader of the GHG-CCI’s Climate Research Group, notes, “The various satellite products tested in this study all suggest a large continental sink. However, differences in the inner-European carbon dioxide patterns should be subject to future research.

“Scientists agree that there are still open questions on carbon sinks, especially for the northern hemisphere, and that more research has to be performed on understanding the differences found by using satellite and in-situ carbon dioxide measurements and biomass inventory information.”

A future extended in-situ network in Europe, along with NASA’s recently launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and the possible CarbonSat mission – one of the two candidates for ESA’s eighth Earth Explorer – will potentially provide the data to continue such research to clarify these open questions on Europe’s and the global carbon budget.

Related links:

GHG-CCI  project: http://www.esa-ghg-cci.org/

Study: Satellite-inferred European carbon sink larger than expected: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/13739/2014/acp-14-13739-2014.html

University of Bremen, Institute of Environmental Physics: http://www.iup.unibremen.de/

ESA's Climate Change Initiative (CCI): http://www.esa-cci.org/

National Institute for Environmental Studies: http://www.nies.go.jp/gaiyo/index-e.html

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/home/index.html

IPCC, AR5, ‘The Physical Science Basis’, Section 6: Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles 2013: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf

Related missions:

Envisat: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Envisat

OCO-2: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/

GOSAT: http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/gosat/index_e.html

CarbonSat at University of Bremen: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/carbonsat/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/University of Bremen.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Chasms and cliffs on Mars

ESA - Mars Express mission patch.

5 January 2015

(Click on the image for enlarge)

Although Mars is a very alien planet, some aspects of its geology are surprisingly familiar. This Mars Express image shows a snippet of a region of Mars filled with cliffs, trenches, faults, giant plateaus and volcanoes.

The flowing cracks and fault-like lines in this image form part of the Claritas Rupes escarpment, a 950 km-long network of steep cliffs and sloping outcrops. This escarpment lies within a larger geological system named Claritas Fossae, a weaving network of ‘grabens’ (a German term meaning ditch or trench) that stretches for some 2000 km.

The many chasms, fractures and cracks in this area are thought to have been caused by stress in the planet’s crust as it stretched and pulled apart, triggered by the formation of a nearby raised mound known as the Tharsis Bulge.

This bulge, located within the volcanic Tharsis region, extends to a height of about 10 km at its peak. Its violent formation caused parts of the crust to crack and shift, sliding into depressions and gaps, forming a distinctive pattern of geological features such as sunken grabens and raised blocks known as ‘horsts’. These two features can be very roughly imagined as an ‘M’ shape – grabens form the bottom of the central dip, while horsts form the two uppermost tips.

Similar patterns can be found on Earth around the Upper Rhine Valley between Basel in Switzerland, and Karlsruhe in Germany, or the Eger Graben in the Czech Republic, near the Ore Mountains.

Prominent examples of terrestrial grabens include California’s Death Valley, and the Dead Sea depression in the Jordan Rift Valley. Examples of horsts include France’s Vosges Mountains, and the Palestine Plateau.

Claritas Rupes forms the eastern boundary of the Tharsis region. This region contains some of the largest volcanoes in the Solar System, including the famous Olympus Mons, which stands some three times the height of Earth’s Mount Everest.

Mars Express spacecraft

This image was acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera of Mars Express on 30 November 2013 at a resolution of about 14 m per pixel. It was first published on 13 February 2014 on the DLR German Aerospace Center and Freie Universität Berlin websites.

Related links:

Chasms and cliffs on Mars - DLR German Aerospace Center: http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10453/651_read-9514/year-all/#/gallery/13644

Chasms and cliffs on Mars -  Freie Universität Berlin: http://www.geo.fu-berlin.de/en/geol/fachrichtungen/planet/press/claritas1/index.html

For more information about Mars Express, visit: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Russian cosmonaut and doctor Boris Morukov dies after car park mission to Mars

ROSCOSMOS logo.

January 3, 2015

Boris Morukov, a Russian cosmonaut and doctor who led an extraordinary experiment in which volunteers simulated a flight to Mars while never leaving a Moscow car park, has died at 64.

"We announce with grief that Boris Morukov died suddenly on New Year's Eve," Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems, where Morukov was deputy director, said on its website on Friday.

Morukov, a doctor and a former cosmonaut, was project director of the unprecedented Mars-500 simulation, in which an international team of six men spent 520 days in isolation to simulate a flight to Mars.

The experiment, which began in 2010 and ended in 2011, was organised jointly with the European Space Agency and the Institute of Biomedical Problems.

The experiment simulated the duration and isolation of a return journey to the Red Planet, even including "walks" on a sandpit replicating the Martian surface and 20-minute time gaps in communication with outside.

Cosmonaut Boris Morukov

The international team of one Chinese, one Italian, one Frenchman and three Russians spent the entire period in a 180-square-metre wood-lined complex in the carpark of the Moscow institute.

"Everything that we got out of this, both the positive and perhaps the negative, undoubtedly can be used in planning a real Mars flight," Morukov said after the experiment ended.

Morukov earlier led a series of experiments into the effects of long-term weightlessness on the human body.

In the most extreme experiment that started in 1986, a group of eight men spent 370 days lying in tilted beds to study the effect on their bone mass.

Born in Moscow, Morukov studied to become a doctor before undergoing training to become a specialist in space medicine. He also trained as a cosmonaut at the Gagarin training centre.

In 2000, he was a crew member on a flight on the US Space Shuttle Atlantis to prepare the International Space Station for its first permanent crew.

Morukov "will always remain in our hearts as a talented scientist, a brilliant organiser and a kind, helpful person", the Institute of Biomedical Problems said.

Biography and more information about the deceased Cosmonaut Boris Morukov, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Morukov

Image, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/NASA/AFP.

R.I.P. 
Condolences, Orbiter.ch

Crew Aboard Station Prepares for Arrival of Dragon

ISS - Expedition 42 Mission patch.

January 3, 2015

Happy New Year 16 Times on Space Station!

The Expedition 42 crew orbiting Earth on the International Space Station gets the opportunity to celebrate New Year’s Eve a whopping 16 times as it circles the globe at 17,500 miles an hour.

Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and his crew, which includes NASA’s Terry Virts, Russian cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samoukutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov, and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, say they plan to celebrate with fruit juice toasts. The year 2015 starts officially for the station crew at 7 p.m. EST Jan. 31, which is midnight by the Universal Time Clock (UTC), also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in London. The crew is scheduled to be in its sleep shift, but may elect to stay up late since it has a day off planned for New Year’s Day.

Watch the Happy New Year message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXvYcIbFVzs&list=PLiuUQ9asub3Qq1AQRirDI-naOwo1H5gaB&index=1

Image above: Terry Virts (@AstroTerry) tweets: Unwrapping an early Christmas gift last week: @AstroRobonaut is my favorite action figure.

The crew spent New Year’s Eve day working on a variety of experiments, ranging from those directed at better understanding changes that occur in the human eye during long-duration spaceflights, and with Earth observations aimed at helping with disaster aid on the Earth’s surface.

Read more about the Ocular Health experiment: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/204.html

Read more about the ISS SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System (ISERV): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/867.html

The crew also continued preparations for the arrival of the next cargo supply ship, the commercial resupply mission of SpaceX-5 and the Dragon spacecraft. Launch of Dragon on a Space-X Falcon 9 booster is planned for 6:20 a.m. EST Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015. NASA Television launch coverage begins at 5 a.m.

Dragon will rendezvous with the space station Thursday, Jan. 8, and Wilmore will use the 58-foot robotic arm to grab the Dragon by its tail and berth if to the station. Grapple is expected about 6 a.m. NASA Television coverage of the grapple starts at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, and installation coverage will begin at 8:15 a.m. Dragon is loaded with more than 3,700 pounds of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations and supplies, including critical materials to support 256 science and research investigations that will take place on the space station during ISS Expeditions 42 and 43.

SpaceX Dragon cargo

A series of briefings outlining Dragon’s mission and the scientific research it will be carrying is planned Monday, Jan. 5.

Read full schedule of SpaceX-5 and ISS Research briefings: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/december/nasa-updates-pre-launch-briefings-for-upcoming-resupply-mission-to-space-station/#.VKQns1q99W8

Watch Terry Virts’ #SpaceVine of Robonaut: https://t.co/kNtYDaJI2M

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images, Text, Credit: NASA / NASA TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Solar Dynamics Observatory Welcomes the New Year

NASA - Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) patch.

January 2, 2015

There were no fireworks on the sun to welcome in the New Year and only a few C-class flares during the last day of 2014. Instead, the sun starts 2015 with an enormous coronal hole near the south pole. This image, captured on Jan. 1, 2015 by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the coronal hole as a dark region in the south.

Coronal holes are regions of the corona where the magnetic field reaches out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface. Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the lovely AIA images. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark.

Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts on board NASA’s Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974. They can be seen for a long time, although the exact shape changes all the time. The polar coronal hole can remain visible for five years or longer. Each time a coronal hole rotates by the Earth we can measure the particles flowing out of the hole as a high-speed stream, another source of space weather.

Charged particles in the Earth’s radiation belts are accelerated when the high-speed stream runs into the Earth’s magnetosphere. The acceleration of particles in the magnetosphere is studied by NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission.

As Solar Cycle 24 fades, the number of flares each day will get smaller, but the coronal holes provide another source of space weather that needs to be understood and predicted.

For more information about Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/main/

Related links:

NASA’s Skylab space station in 1973 and 1974: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/Skylab.shtml

NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/mission/

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/SDO/Caption: Dean Pesnell.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Technology Innovations Spin NASA's SMAP into Space

NASA - SMAP Mission logo.

January 1, 2015

SMAP: Mapping Global Soil Moisture, Managing a Better Future

Video above: Launching in January 2015, NASA's Soil Moisture Mapping satellite (SMAP) will track water in the soil. Data gathered with help forecast weather, floods, drought, crop yield and landslides - all from outer space. Video Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It's active. It's passive. And it's got a big, spinning lasso.

Scheduled for launch on Jan. 29, 2015, NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) instrument will measure the moisture lodged in Earth's soils with an unprecedented accuracy and resolution. The instrument's three main parts are a radar, a radiometer and the largest rotating mesh antenna ever deployed in space.

Remote sensing instruments are called “active” when they emit their own signals and “passive” when they record signals that already exist. The mission's science instrument ropes together a sensor of each type to corral the highest-resolution, most accurate measurements ever made of soil moisture -- a tiny fraction of Earth's water that has a disproportionately large effect on weather and agriculture.

To enable the mission to meet its accuracy needs while covering the globe every three days or less, SMAP engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, designed and built the largest rotating antenna that could be stowed into a space of only one foot by four feet (30 by 120 centimeters) for launch. The dish is 19.7 feet (6 meters) in diameter.

"We call it the spinning lasso," said Wendy Edelstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, the SMAP instrument manager. Like the cowboy's lariat, the antenna is attached on one side to an arm with a crook in its elbow. It spins around the arm at about 14 revolutions per minute (one complete rotation every four seconds). The antenna dish was provided by Northrop Grumman Astro Aerospace in Carpinteria, California. The motor that spins the antenna was provided by the Boeing Company in El Segundo, California.

"The antenna caused us a lot of angst, no doubt about it," Edelstein noted. Although the antenna must fit during launch into a space not much bigger than a tall kitchen trash can, it must unfold so precisely that the surface shape of the mesh is accurate within about an eighth of an inch (a few millimeters).

The mesh dish is edged with a ring of lightweight graphite supports that stretch apart like a baby gate when a single cable is pulled, drawing the mesh outward. "Making sure we don't have snags, that the mesh doesn't hang up on the supports and tear when it's deploying -- all of that requires very careful engineering," Edelstein said. "We test, and we test, and we test some more. We have a very stable and robust system now."

Artist's rendering of the SMAP instrument. Image Credit: NASA

SMAP's radar, developed and built at JPL, uses the antenna to transmit microwaves toward Earth and receive the signals that bounce back, called backscatter. The microwaves penetrate a few inches or more into the soil before they rebound. Changes in the electrical properties of the returning microwaves indicate changes in soil moisture, and also tell whether or not the soil is frozen. Using a complex technique called synthetic aperture radar processing, the radar can produce ultra-sharp images with a resolution of about half a mile to a mile and a half (one to three kilometers).

SMAP's radiometer detects differences in Earth's natural emissions of microwaves that are caused by water in soil. To address a problem that has seriously hampered earlier missions using this kind of instrument to study soil moisture, the radiometer designers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, developed and built one of the most sophisticated signal-processing systems ever created for such a scientific instrument.

The problem is radio frequency interference. The microwave wavelengths that SMAP uses are officially reserved for scientific use, but signals at nearby wavelengths that are used for air traffic control, cell phones and other purposes spill over into SMAP's wavelengths unpredictably. Conventional signal processing averages data over a long time period, which means that even a short burst of interference skews the record for that whole period. The Goddard engineers devised a new way to delete only the small segments of actual interference, leaving much more of the observations untouched.

Combining the radar and radiometer signals allows scientists to take advantage of the strengths of both technologies while working around their weaknesses. "The radiometer provides more accurate soil moisture but a coarse resolution of about 40 kilometers [25 miles] across," said JPL's Eni Njoku, a research scientist with SMAP. "With the radar, you can create very high resolution, but it's less accurate. To get both an accurate and a high-resolution measurement, we process the two signals together."

SMAP will be the fifth NASA Earth science mission launched within the last 12 months.

For more about the SMAP mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/smap/

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from space, air and land 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 this year, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA Earth Science News Team, written by Carol Rasmussen/JPL/Alan Buis.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CASC ends 2014 with Long March 3A launch of Fengyun-2G

CASC - China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation logo.

January 1, 2015

Image above: A Long March 3A rocket launched at 01:02 GMT Wednesday (8:02 p.m. EST Tuesday) with the Fengyun 2G weather satellite. Image Credit: Xinhua.

CASC ends 2014 with Long March 3A launch of Fengyun-2G (Fengyun-2-8) geostationary meteorological satellite using a Long March 3A (Chang Zheng 3A) rocket. The launch took place at 01:02 UTC on Wednesday from Pad LC2 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

China’s fleet of Fengyun 2 spacecraft have a similar mission to NOAA’s GOES weather satellites in geostationary orbit. They provide non-stop images of clouds and storm systems over a third of the planet from the Middle East to the Central Pacific Ocean.

Fengyun 2G geostationary weather satellite. Image Credit:CASC

Chinese meteorologists exchange weather data acquired by the Fengyun satellites with NOAA and Eumetsat, its European counterpart.

One more satellite from the fleet is scheduled before the new Fengyun-4 satellites enters service, with the first launch of the next generation scheduled for December 2015.

Made by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), Fengyun 2G is expected to operate at least four years, but previous Chinese weather satellites have functioned longer than designed. The new satellite features several technical improvements, and officials expect it to work until 2020, the China Meteorological Administration said on its website.

The barrel-shaped satellite is spin-stabilized — rotating at 100 rpm — and carries a scanning radiometer to observe Earth’s weather in visible and infrared wavelengths, allowing day and night imagery of storms.

For more information about China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), visit: http://english.spacechina.com/n16421/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CASC/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Happy New Year 2015! Best regards, Orbiter.ch