Pages

Thursday, February 22, 2024

How Fieldwork in the Amazon is Supporting NASA Climate Science | JPL

How Fieldwork in the Amazon is Supporting NASA Climate Science | JPL

A joint U.S.-India satellite mission called NISAR—the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission—will soon set out with new tools to better understand climate change. As a way to validate the satellite’s global, space-based observations, NASA scientists went to the Peruvian Amazon to install a network of sensors that will help calibrate measurements from the NISAR spacecraft.

Why the Amazon? In tropical wetlands, changes in seasonal flooding cycles can lead to increased production of greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. 

The Amazon rainforest, also called Amazon jungle or Amazonia, is a moist broadleaf tropical rainforest in the Amazon biome that covers most of the Amazon basin of South America. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations and formally acknowledged indigenous territories.

A collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), NISAR will use a sophisticated radar system to track wetland inundation and other changes to Earth’s surface. The satellite is expected to launch in early 2024 from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.

For more information on the NISAR mission, visit: https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/


Credits: Video production and NISAR animations: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Methane animations: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio; Amazon field work footage courtesy of A. Pruna

Duration: 2 minutes, 16 seconds

Release Date: Feb. 21, 2024


#NASA #ISRO #Space #Planet #Earth #Science #NISAR #Satellite #Amazon #SyntheticApertureRadar #SAR #EarthObservation #Land #Ice #Climate #ClimateChange #GlobalHeating #SpaceTechnology #Engineering #India #BhāratGaṇarājya #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

No comments:

Post a Comment