Powering Science NASA's Large Strategic Science Missions (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix C: Earth Science Division Missions
Appendix C: Earth Science Division Missions
Pages 76-88
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From page 76... ...
missions Terra, Aura, and Aqua; and the small mission Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)
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From page 77... ...
Aqua Aqua, the second of the EOS missions, obtains information on Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Aqua instruments also observe radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and temperatures of air, land, and water.
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From page 78... ...
Scientific Productivity Understanding Earth's interdependent planetary-scale physical, biogeochemical, and climate systems requires that a broad set of measurements be made over long time periods -- decadal or longer. At 17 years after the launch of the first EOS platform Terra, 15 years after Aqua, and over a decade since the launch of Aura, these large strategic EOS missions have had an enormous impact on the global Earth science community by providing over a decade of observations to the user community spanning all of NASA Earth Science Division's designated science focus areas.
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From page 79... ...
, providing a funding opportunity to the broad community interested in atmospheric composition research. Impact on the Current and Future Health of the Relevant Scientific Communities As described earlier, the EOS missions Terra, Aqua, and Aura provide the basic library of science data needed by the Earth science community.
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Contributions to Development and Demonstration of Technology Applicable to Future Missions The large size and cross-disciplinary nature of the EOS missions served as a test bed for demonstrating and testing different technologies and approaches for meeting Earth science goals. As a result many of the instruments on the EOS platforms were state of the art in the development phase and became predecessors for follow-on missions.
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From page 81... ...
Terra: Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Composed of three separate instrument subsystems (the visible and near infrared [VNIR] , the shortwave infrared [SWIR]
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clearly demonstrates that large strategic missions can successfully serve to focus and galvanize the science community around new and emerging scientific perspectives. As the first of the EOS missions, Terra was referred to as a "flagship mission" in Earth science because it was the first in a series demonstrating the value of a "great observatory" approach for collecting the vast amount of data required to advance Earth system science.
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CLOUD-AEROSOL LIDAR AND INFRARED PATHFINDER SATELLITE OBSERVATION The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission is an international partnership between NASA and the French Space Agency (CNES)
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From page 84... ...
CALIPSO observations have been widely adopted by the modeling community, particularly by the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project. CALIPSO observations and data products produced by the CALIPSO project are highly valued by the international scientific community and are used in more than 1,800 publications.2 (See Figures C.1 and C.2.)
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This mission demonstrates that science missions can have value to operating agencies that have to make predictions about weather events. Conclusions CALIPSO is an example of a mission that both is international and serves an operational purpose.
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From page 86... ...
ocean heat content; • Global measurements of the hydrological cycle including seasonal and interannual river basin water storage changes, human influences on regional water storage changes, large-scale evapotranspiration, land-ocean mass exchange, and regional aquifer changes; • Changes in the deep ocean currents and mass and energy transport, inter-ocean-basin mass variations, and regional oceanic processes; • Large-scale post-glacial rebound; and • Episodic mass displacements and mantle flow associated with large earthquakes. The twin GRACE satellites have collected science data continuously since commissioning in April 2002.
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From page 87... ...
Overall, global measurements of regional water storage are capabilities that are uniquely provided by GRACE, and these measurements will be a unique resource for future water management. In a significant accomplishment GRACE data have been ingested by a Land Data Assimilation Model to demonstrate significant improvements in the spatial and temporal resolution of the Total Water Storage Products and to provide a separation of the columnar total water storage into the surface, soil, and groundwater components.
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From page 88... ...
Such measurements have provided quantitative data on the loss of mass in the Greenland ice sheet from 2002 to 2016, which has, in turn produced a global rise in sea level at a rate of 0.8 mm per year. In general, GRACE has revealed new details on the ebb and flow of water basin content, for example, in the Amazon, and how Earth's net water cycle impacts sea level height on a global scale.
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