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The PREFIRE mission will help develop a more detailed understanding of how much heat the Arctic and Antarctica radiate into space and how this influences global climate.<\/em><\/p>\n NASA\u2019s newest climate mission has started collecting data on the amount of heat in the form of far-infrared radiation that the Arctic and Antarctic environments emit to space. These measurements by the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-Infrared Experiment (PREFIRE<\/a>) are key to better predicting how climate change will affect Earth\u2019s ice, seas, and weather \u2014 information that will help humanity better prepare for a changing world.<\/p>\n One of PREFIRE\u2019s two shoebox-size cube satellites, or CubeSats, launched<\/a> on May 25 from New Zealand, followed by its twin<\/a> on June 5. The first CubeSat started sending back science data on July 1. The second CubeSat began collecting science data on July 25, and the mission will release the data after an issue with the GPS system on this CubeSat is resolved.<\/p>\n The PREFIRE mission will help researchers gain a clearer understanding of when and where the Arctic and Antarctica emit far-infrared radiation (wavelengths greater than 15 micrometers) to space. This includes how atmospheric water vapor and clouds influence the amount of heat that escapes Earth. Since clouds and water vapor can trap far-infrared radiation near Earth\u2019s surface, they can increase global temperatures as part of a process known as the greenhouse effect<\/a>. This is where gases in Earth\u2019s atmosphere \u2014 such as carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor \u2014 act as insulators, preventing heat emitted by the planet from escaping to space.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are constantly looking for new ways to observe the planet and fill in critical gaps in our knowledge. With CubeSats like PREFIRE, we are doing both,\u201d said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. \u201cThe mission, part of our competitively-selected Earth Venture program, is a great example of the innovative science we can achieve through collaboration with university and industry partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Earth absorbs much of the Sun\u2019s energy in the tropics; weather and ocean currents transport that heat toward the Arctic and Antarctica, which receive much less sunlight. The polar environment \u2014 including ice, snow, and clouds \u2014 emits a lot of that heat into space, much of which is in the form of far-infrared radiation. But those emissions have never been systematically measured, which is where PREFIRE comes in.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so exciting to see the data coming in,\u201d said Tristan L\u2019Ecuyer, PREFIRE\u2019s principal investigator and a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. \u201cWith the addition of the far-infrared measurements from PREFIRE, we\u2019re seeing for the first time the full energy spectrum that Earth radiates into space, which is critical to understanding climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n This visualization of PREFIRE data (above) shows brightness temperatures \u2014 or the intensity of radiation emitted from Earth at several wavelengths, including the far-infrared. Yellow and red indicate more intense emissions originating from Earth\u2019s surface, while blue and green represent lower emission intensities coinciding with colder areas on the surface or in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n The visualization starts by showing data on mid-infrared emissions (wavelengths between 4 to 15 micrometers) taken in early July during several polar orbits by the first CubeSat to launch. It then zooms in on two passes over Greenland. The orbital tracks expand vertically to show how far-infrared emissions vary through the atmosphere. The visualization ends by focusing on an area where the two passes intersect, showing how the intensity of far-infrared emissions changed over the nine hours between these two orbits.<\/p>\n The two PREFIRE CubeSats are in asynchronous, near-polar orbits, which means they pass over the same spots in the Arctic and Antarctic within hours of each other, collecting the same kind of data. This gives researchers a time series of measurements that they can use to study relatively short-lived phenomena like ice sheet melting or cloud formation and how they affect far-infrared emissions over time.<\/p>\n The PREFIRE mission was jointly developed by NASA and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate and provided the spectrometers. Blue Canyon Technologies built and now operates the CubeSats, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is processing and analyzing the data collected by the instruments.<\/p>\n To learn more about PREFIRE, visit:More About PREFIRE<\/strong><\/h3>\n
https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/prefire\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n