An airborne climate campaign launched by NASA is aimed at answering questions about changing global conditions, by studying a wide range of areas, including Africa and the Arctic.
Aircraft from NASA will begin five studies around the world, starting in 2015, investigating effects and causes of global warming, including wildfires in Africa, warming oceans, and airborne pollution.
"These new investigations address a variety of key scientific questions critical to advancing our understanding of how Earth works. These innovative airborne experiments will let us probe inside processes and locations in unprecedented detail that complements what we can do with our fleet of Earth-observing satellites," Jack Kaye, from NASA's Earth Science Division, said.
The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America project will accurately measure sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, methane, and other chemicals. Kenneth Davis of Pennsylvania State University and his team will also study how these substances are carried through air masses.
Atmospheric chemistry and air pollution studies will investigate how the atmosphere is affected by manmade pollutants, as the main goal of the Atmospheric Tomography project, headed by Steven Wofsy of Harvard University.
The North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study will examine how increasing temperatures are affecting ocean currents. Living organisms, such as tiny but plentiful phytoplankton will be studied, to determine their effect on the environment.
Melting glaciers in Greenland will be examined by Josh Willis of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who will lead the Oceans Melting Greenland mission.
"[T]he Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions project [will] probe how smoke particles from massive biomass burning in Africa influences cloud cover over the Atlantic," NASA officials reported.
Each of the five individual studies is capped at $30 million in total costs, as Venture-class projects of the national space agency.
In Lima, Peru, leaders from around the world are gathering to negotiate a new agreement to stem the flow of greenhouse gases, in an effort to control rising temperatures. In November 2014, the two largest producers of greenhouse gases - China and the United States - each made pledges to control emissions. Some environmentalists have criticized those announcements, saying they were not specific enough to adequately address global climate change. Leaders from the European Union have announced their nations will cut emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels within the next 15 years. The Green Climate Fund, set up to assist developing nations in adopting green energy systems, has recently received $10 billion in pledges.
"There has been a very, very concerted effort to change the global mood on climate change and to really show that not only must we address climate change but that we have the possibility of doing that. We have the capital. We have the technology," Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said.
An international meeting scheduled for 2015 in Paris will be aimed at generating a coordinated effort among nations at combating global climate change.
