Posted on by Anne Minard

NASA: Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Collection of Ireland images, captured from the AIRS instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite on March 3. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen/ Henry Kline

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With the luck o’ the Irish, NASA’s Aqua satellite was fortunate to capture mostly clear views of the Emerald Isle in these near-infrared/visible, infrared and microwave light views acquired by Aqua’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument. And with holiday flair, the agency has arranged the images into a clover and released them as a St. Paddy’s Day treat.

From the press release:

Ireland, located in the Atlantic Ocean, is the third-largest island in Europe, and originated the St. Patrick’s Day holiday. Located west of Great Britain and separated from it by the Irish Sea, it is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. In March, Ireland’s average daytime high temperature is near 9.4 degrees Celsius (49 degrees Fahrenheit) and its average nighttime low temperature is near 3.3 degrees Celsius (38 degrees Fahrenheit).

The AIRS instrument measures temperatures of land, sea and air to provide a better understanding of what is happening in those environments. The March 3 images reveal temperatures near the surface that were near normal for this time of year.

NASA’s Aqua satellite circles Earth pole-to-pole 15 times a day in a sun-synchronous orbit to provide data and images to researchers in Earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences. When Aqua passed over Ireland on March 3, it captured visible, infrared and microwave images: a clover of images from one instrument.

The false-color near-infrared/visible image revealed a mostly cloud-free country, except for the northernmost area, as a cold front approached from the west. Also visible were some of the navigable rivers that extend inland.

The visible image also showed areas over the North Sea, Spain and the French-Italian border region where the clouds were heavy enough to confine AIRS infrared data to the higher regions of the atmosphere above the cloud tops. Over the Pyrenees at the Spanish-French border and the Alps at the French-Italian border, the clouds were heavy enough (and contained some precipitation) so that the surface is not visible even using the microwave wavelength.

The infrared image showed that the clouds approaching Ireland from the west were low clouds associated with the cold front moving east. There were no areas of high, cold clouds that would indicate convection and the possibility of thunderstorms. “The brightness temperature of the island is approximately 283 Kelvin, which amounts to 10 degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Ed Olsen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Olsen provides images for the AIRS instrument. “This brightness temperature is a combination of the temperature of the near-surface air temperature and the (land) surface temperature. This is close to the ambient temperature that the population there experienced outdoors.”

The microwave brightness temperature is a bit colder than the infrared temperature data, approximately 273 Kelvin, which is just at the freezing point for water (0 degrees Celsius/32 degrees Fahrenheit). Olsen noted, “The major component of the 89 gigahertz radiances is due to emissions from the surface to about a centimeter below the surface.” He said the temperature of the ground just below the (land surface) that is warmed by the sun is colder–after all, it is still winter in Ireland.

AIRS infrared data can measure cold, high cloud tops in thunderstorms and tropical cyclones, warm or cold ocean waters and land surfaces. Cloud top temperatures, for example, provide clues to scientists about the power of the thunderstorms. The colder the clouds are, the higher they are, and the more powerful the thunderstorms. When AIRS measures cloud temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 52 degrees Celsius (minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit), that indicates high cloud tops, strong convection and the likelihood of powerful thunderstorms.

Data from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), another of the AIRS suite of instruments on Aqua, are used to create microwave images. Cold areas in AMSU images can indicate where there is precipitation or ice in cloud tops.

Every day, NASA’s Aqua satellite looks at conditions around the globe, just like looking over a clover (in this case, a three-leafed or imaged one) that it looked at before.

Source: NASA release, via Eurekalert

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis

TerraSAR-X Change Analysis of Sendai Area, Japan. Map show coastal area of Sendai effected by 9,0 magnitude Earthquake that triggered ensuing destructive Tsunami. Credit: Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) - German Aerospace Center

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The terribly destructive magnitude 9.0 earthquake which struck Japan on March 11, may have had another effect – Shortening the length of each Earth day and shifting its axis. Did you notice any change ?

Well according to NASA, the changes are so small that you won’t notice the difference.

Based on initial calculations conducted by Richard Gross, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the earthquake should have caused Earth to rotate just slightly faster, shortening the length of the day by about 1.8 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second), according to a statement released by NASA.

A reader posted this link to before and after photos

Gross used complex modeling and estimates of fault slippage to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation of how the earth’s rotation may have been affected.

Calculations by Gross also indicate that the position of Earth’s figure axis could have shifted by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), towards 133 degrees east longitude. The figure axis is the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced.
Earth’s figure axis is therefore different and offset from the north-south axis by about 10 meters.

“This shift in Earth’s figure axis will cause Earth to wobble a bit differently as it rotates, but it will not cause a shift of Earth’s axis in space-only external forces such as the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and planets can do that,” according to the NASA statement.

The estimates for both the shortening in the Earth’s rotation and shift in the figure axis are preliminary and will very likely change as more data is collected and the calculations are refined.

The March 11 earthquake was the fifth largest since 1900. So far, over 4000 people are confirmed dead and the overall death total may exceed 10,000.

Several heavily damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant are in danger of meltdown as hero workers inside put their lives on the line to avoid a catastrophic failure and try to prevent the spread of lethal radiation.

This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite

Previously, Gross had calculated the affects of the magnitude 8.8 Chilean quake in 2010 and found them to be slightly smaller compared to the Japanese quake. He calculated a shortening in the length of day of about 1.26 microseconds and shifting of Earth’s figure axis of about 8 centimeters (3 inches). These affects are dependent on the magnitude of the quake, exactly where it is located as well as how the particulars of how the fault slips.

In fact, Earth’s rotation is changing all the time as a result of continual changes in atmospheric winds and oceanic currents and these effects are about 550 times larger than the Japanese earthquake.

“Over the course of a year, the length of the day increases and decreases by about a millisecond,” says Gross. Indeed, the effects of earthquakes on changing rotation are so tiny that they are smaller than the margin of error in the measurements themselves.

By comparison, measurements of the figure axis are much more reliable and meaningful. Changes to the figure axis can be accurately measured to within about 5 centimeters. This means that the estimated 17 centimeter shift from the Japanese quake may be real after accounting for the effects of the atmospheric winds and ocean currents. Further research is needed as more data are collected and analyzed.

“These changes in Earth’s rotation are perfectly natural and happen all the time. People shouldn’t worry about them,” said Gross.

Source: NASA Press Release:

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Massive 8.9 Earthquake Hits Japan; Tsunamis Predicted for Pacific Basin

Seismology
Earthquake map from the USGS of recent quake activity around Japan. Credit: USGS

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An 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern Japan on March 11, one of the strongest to ever hit Japan. The massive quake has triggered tsunamis not only in Japan, but around the Pacific Basin. Walls of water and debris have inundated coastal areas of Japan, and tsunami warnings were issued for at least 20 countries and numerous Pacific islands, including coastal Russia, the western coast of Canada and the US, the Marcus Islands, Taiwan, Guam and the Hawaiian Islands, where a full coastal evactuation has been taking place throughout early Friday morning. Strong aftershocks, as strong as 6.5-magnitude continue to shake the region, (the latest U.S. Geological Survey map, above, shows 95 recent quakes in the area) and at least one nuclear power plant in Japan may be encountering problems. Images coming from Japan show widespread damage from both the quakes and the tsunamis.

The USGS reported that the epicenter of the earthquake was 373 kilometers (231 miles) northeast of Tokyo and 130 km (80 miles) east of Sendai, Honshu. Police reports from Sendai say that so 200-300 bodies have been recovered, but the total death toll will likely be much, much higher. Reports say this is the 6th largest earthquake ever monitored, and the largest in Japan in over 140 years.

Tokyo did not suffer much damage, but in northern Japan, many areas were devastated. Compounding the damage was a wall of water that rushed inland of the island nation, leveling houses and washing away boats, cars and other debris. Click here to see some shocking images from the New York Times.

Reports says Japan is evacuating thousands of people from nearby a nuclear power plant, but the current condition of the reactor core is unknown at this time. Four reactors are located near the Earthquake area. The reactors were shut down, and no leaks have been found so far, but the cooling system for the reactors may not be working correctly.

Reports via Twitter say the roof may have collapsed at JAXA Tsukuba Space Center.

Tsunami waves have now begun to wash ashore in the Hawaiian Islands. The first waves are not necessarily the strongest; waves are predicted to be 2-3 meters (6-8 ft.) in Hawaii. Tsunamis are very hard to predict, and the USGS says wave heights can vary widely.

Get the latest on the tsunami predictions from NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

See this Google Map, overlaid with NOAA-predicted tsunami times.

Callan Bentley at the AGU Blogosphere has a good overview of earthquake and tsunami dynamics.

Predicted tusnami map from the March 11 earthquake. Credit: CNN
Posted on by Anne Minard

‘Climate Change Satellite’ Fails to Reach Orbit, Crashes in Ocean

Credit: NASA

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NASA’s Glory mission launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Friday at 5:09:45 a.m. EST failed to reach orbit. Telemetry indicated the fairing, the protective shell atop the Taurus XL rocket, did not separate as expected about three minutes after launch. The failure represents a $420 million loss for NASA, and the loss of two important investigations related to climate change: ongoing data collection to monitor the sun’s energy reaching Earth, and a study of how aerosols move through Earth’s atmosphere and may influence climate.

This is the second time a Taurus XL rocket has failed to separate. NASA’s $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory crashed into the ocean in February 2009 due to a similar mishap. After that failure, Orbital Sciences redesigned the system. It has worked three times since on the company’s Minotaur rocket.

Source: NASA press release. Also see a previous story about the mission.

Posted on by Anne Minard

New Study: Sun’s Deep Physics Explain Sunspot-Free Days

Image credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO-AIA/JAXA/Hinode-XRT; Artistic rendering: Cygnus-Kolkata/William T. Bridgman; Conceptualization and simulation data: Dibyendu Nandy, Andres Munoz-Jaramillo and Petrus C.H. Martens.

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The long lull in sunspots at the end of Solar Cycle 23 wasn’t just fodder for global cooling predictions — it gave solar physicists plenty to study. And a new computer analysis may have come up with a fairly simple explanation for the sun’s odd quiet. Lead author Dibyendu Nandy, of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata, and his colleagues report in Nature today that the long string of sunspot-free days between solar cycles 23 and 24 may directly correlate with the speed of north-south flow of plasma toward the sun’s equator. Their collage, above, shows magnetic fields in the interior of the Sun simulated using a solar dynamo model (center) and the observed solar corona at two different phases of solar activity: A quiescent phase during the recent, unusually long minimum, at right, and a comparatively active phase following the minimum, at left.

This visible-light photograph, taken in 2008 by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, shows the Sun's face free of sunspots. Credit: NASA/SOHO

The sun’s magnetic activity varies periodically, exhibiting an ~11-year cycle that can be monitored by observing the frequency and location of sunspots. Sunspots are strongly magnetized regions generated by the sun’s internal magnetic field and are the seats of solar storms that generate beautiful auroras but also pose hazards to satellites, navigation technologies like GPS and communications infrastructures.

Towards the end of solar cycle 23, which peaked in 2001 and wound down in 2008, the Sun’s activity entered a prolonged minimum, characterized by a very weak polar magnetic field and an unusually large number of days without sunspots: 780 days between 2008 and 2010. In a typical solar minimum, the sun goes spot-free for about 300 days, making the last minimum the longest since 1913.

The study authors conducted magnetic dynamo simulations of 210 sunspot cycles spanning some 2,000 years while varying the speed of the solar internal meridional (north-south) plasma flow. The sun’s plasma flows much like Earth’s ocean currents: rising at the equator, streaming toward the poles, then sinking and flowing back to the equator. At a typical speed of 40 miles per hour, it takes about 11 years to make one loop.

Nandy and his colleagues discovered that the Sun’s plasma rivers speed up and slow down like a malfunctioning conveyor belt, probably due to complicated feedback between the plasma flow and solar magnetic fields.

“It’s like a production line – a slowdown puts distance between the end of the last solar cycle and the start of the new one,” said study co-author Andres Munoz-Jaramillo, a visiting research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Specifically, the authors write, a fast meridional flow in the first half of a cycle, followed by a slower flow in the second half, leads to a deep sunspot minimum — and can reproduce the observed characteristics of the cycle 23 minimum.

Nandy and his colleagues say continued solar observations will be key to confirming and elaborating on the modeling results.

“We anticipate that NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory will provide more precise constraints on the structure of the plasma flows deep in the solar interior, which could be useful for complementing these simulations,” they write.

Source: Nature and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Posted on by Anne Minard

Glory Launch Gets Another Go

Credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB

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NASA will try again to launch its “climate change satellite” on Friday, following an attempt that was scrubbed on Feb. 23 due to technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle, shown at right.

The March 4 liftoff is targeted for just after 2 a.m. local time at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (5:09:43 a.m. eastern).

Two instruments aboard Glory will help address influences on Earth’s climate. The Total Irradiance Monitor led by Greg Kopp at the Boulder, Colorado-based Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will continue a decades-long measurement of the sun’s energy reaching Earth, and Raytheon’s Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor will track aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. See a more detailed story about the mission.

NASA will stream coverage of the launch starting at 3:30 a.m. eastern time on March 4. Real-time updates of countdown and launch milestones will also be posted on NASA’s launch blog.

Source: NASA announcement via Eurekalert!

Posted on by Anne Minard

Meteorites May Have Delivered First Ammonia for Life on Earth

Researchers have teased ammonia of a carbon-containing meteorite from Antarctica, and propose that meteorites may have delivered that essential ingredient for life to an early Earth.

The results appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and add to a growing body of evidence that meteorites may have played a key role in the development of life here. The NASA graphic at left was released just last month, when researchers reported that meteorites may have also delivered Earth’s first left-hand amino acids.

A Renazzo stony meteorite. Credit: NASA

Lead author Sandra Pizzarello, of Arizona State University, and her colleagues note in the new paper that carbonaceous chondrites are asteroidal meteorites known to contain abundant organic materials.

“Given that meteorites and comets have reached the Earth since it formed, it has been proposed that the exogenous influx from these bodies provided the organic inventories necessary for the emergence of life,” they write.

The carbonaceous meteorites of the Renazzo-type family (CR) are known to be especially rich in small soluble organic molecules, such as the amino acids glycine and alanine. To test for the presence of ammonia, the researchers collected powder from the much-studied CR2 Grave Nunataks (GRA) 95229 meteorite and treated it with water at high temperature and pressure. They found that the treated powders emitted ammonia, NH4, an important precursor to complex biological molecules such as amino acids and DNA, into the surrounding water.

Next, the researchers analyzed the nitrogen atoms within the ammonia and determined that the atomic isotope did not match those currently found on Earth, eliminating the possibility that the ammonia resulted from contamination during the experiment. Researchers have struggled to pinpoint the origin of the ammonia responsible for triggering the formation of the first biomolecules on early Earth. The authors suggest that now, they may have found it.

“The findings appear to trace CR2 meteorites’ origin to cosmochemical regimes where ammonia was pervasive, and we speculate that their delivery to the early Earth could have fostered prebiotic molecular evolution,” they write.

Source: Pizzarello et al., Abundant ammonia in primitive asteroids and the case for a possible exobiology.

Posted on by Anne Minard

Meteorites Illuminate Mystery of Chromium in Earth’s Core

It’s generally assumed that the Earth’s overall composition is similar to that of chondritic meteorites, the primitive, undifferentiated building blocks of the solar system. But a new study in Science Express led by Frederic Moynier, of the University of California at Davis, seems to suggest that Earth is a bit of an oddball.

 

 

Thin section of a chondritic meteorite. Credit: NASA

Moynier and his colleagues analyzed the isotope signature of chromium in a variety of meteorites, and found that it differed from chromium’s signature in the mantle.

“We show through high-precision measurements of Cr stable isotopes in a range of meteorites, which deviate by up to ~0.4‰ from the bulk silicate Earth, that Cr depletion resulted from its partitioning into Earth’s core with a preferential enrichment in light isotopes,” the authors write. “Ab-initio calculations suggest that the isotopic signature was established at mid-mantle magma ocean depth as Earth accreted planetary embryos and progressively became more oxidized.”

Chromium’s origins. New evidence suggests that, in the early solar nebula (A), chromium isotopes were divided into two components, one containing light isotopes, the other heavy isotopes. In the early Earth (B), these components formed a homogeneous mixture. During core partitioning (C), the core became enriched with lighter chromium isotopes, and the mantle with heavier isotopes. Courtesy of Science/AAAS

The results point to a process known as “core partitioning,” rather than an alternative process involving the volatilization of certain chromium isotopes so that they would have escaped from the Earth’s mantle. Core partitioning took place early on Earth at high temperatures, when the core separated from the silicate earth, leaving the core with a distinct composition that is enriched with lighter chromium isotopes, notes William McDonough, from the University of Maryland at College Park, in an accompanying Perspective piece.

McDonough writes that chromium, Earth’s 10th most abundant element, is named for the Greek word for color and “adds green to emeralds, red to rubies, brilliance to plated metals, and corrosion-proof quality to stainless steels.” It is distributed roughly equally throughout the planet.

He says the new result “adds another investigative tool for understanding and documenting past and present planetary processes. For the cosmochemistry and meteoritics communities, the findings further bolster the view that the solar nebula was a heterogeneous mixture of different components.”

Source: Science. The McDonough paper will be published online today by the journal Science, at the Science Express website.

Posted on by Anne Minard

‘Climate Change Satellite’ Gets its Day in the Sun — Finally

Artist concept of the Glory spacecraft in Earth orbit. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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NASA is launching an Earth-orbiting satellite called Glory tomorrow that will tackle a highly charged question: How much can the sun contribute to climate change?

The lull in solar activity between solar cycles 23 and 24 lasted for two years, twice as long as expected. By mid-2009, well into the second year, predictions of global cooling — another Little Ice Age — dominated global warming skeptic blogs. Now Solar Cycle 24 is safely underway, but aside from the dramatic flare and rash of sunspots that erupted last week, it’s been wimpy. Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the Boulder, Colo.-based Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, says he expects a subdued maximum for Solar Cycle 24 (around 2013) and generally, weak solar cycles come in threes. Each known set of sluggish solar cycles in the past has coincided with bitterly cold winters in parts of the globe — especially Europe and North America.

The question is, with the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, would we even feel an extended solar minimum? That’s exactly what Glory will aim to find out.

Glory will launch shortly after 2 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Feb. 23 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Santa Barbara, Calif. The six-foot (1.9 meter), 1,100-pound (525 kg) satellite will orbit for at least three years in Earth’s upper atmosphere, where it will monitor both the total solar energy that’s reaching Earth, and the airborne aerosols greeting the energy it when it gets here.

Aerosols include salt, mineral dust, soot, and smoke and come from a variety of sources – such as vehicle exhaust, campfires, volcanoes and even desert winds and sea spray. They can influence climate by absorbing and scattering light, and NASA scientists have said the range of uncertainty about their role in climate change is far greater than any doubt about greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. Raytheon’s Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, an instrument mounted on the Earth-facing side of the spacecraft, will observe the movement of aerosols through the atmosphere over time, especially on a seasonal scale.

Glory’s sun-facing side will sport the Total Irradiance Monitor, which will measure the intensity of solar radiation at the top of Earth’s atmosphere, adding to a 32-year data set, to record the solar radiation reaching Earth.

Watch a short video on the data: Solar Variability and Total Solar Irradiance (LASP)

Four solar irradiance instruments are currently flying, including VIRGO, launched in 1995, and SORCE, sent into orbit in 2003. Three of those, though, have long exceeded their designed mission lifetimes and are deteriorating. The European PICARD mission, launched in 2010, and NASA’s Glory mission are the new guard.

Greg Kopp, a researcher also at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is principal investigator on the Glory mission. He says the existing data has already helped researchers understand variations on the scale of the sun’s 11-year activity cycles. But in order to capture longer trends, observations must continue. And solar researchers are increasingly eager to quantify the sun’s role, given the global importance of the question.

“I’m fond of saying we should get closer to the votersphere,” says Daniel Baker, director of Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “I can think of no problem that is more significant to humanity than understanding climate change.”

Follow the mission:

On Feb. 23, NASA TV coverage of the countdown will begin at 3:30 a.m. EST (12:30 a.m. PST). Liftoff is targeted for 5:09:43 a.m. EST (2:09:43 a.m. PST). Spacecraft separation from the Taurus occurs 13 minutes after launch. The briefings and launch coverage also will be streamed online.

Launch coverage of Glory countdown activities will appear on NASA’s launch blog starting at 3:30 a.m. EST (12:30 a.m. PST). Real-time updates of countdown milestones as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff will also be available.

See also NASA’s Glory page and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

As Seen from Space: Ghostly, Ethereal Island

The volcanic island Ostrov Shikotan as seen by The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

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Looking rather otherworldly, this haunting view of Shikotan-to island shows ghostly swirls of sea ice surrounding the snow-covered volcanic island. Also known as Ostrov Shikotan, this island is at the southern end of a volcanic archipelago called the Kuril Chain, which is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The chain stretches approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) northeast from Japan, off the coast of Russia. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of Shikotan on February 14, 2011.

When the ice around the island forms, it is shaped by the moving currents – giving it a swirly appearance. North of the western end of Shikotan, eddies have shaped the ice into rough circles.

The island’s rugged appearance comes from millions of years of volcanic and seismic activity, multiple tsunamis, and weathering from wind and rain. The total land area of Shikotan is 225 square km.

Although this island is a part of Russia, Japan maintains a claim to it as well. And although you wouldn’t guess it from this image, there are two different settlements of about 1,000 people each. The name of Shikotan derives from an ancient Japanese dialect and means “land with big communities.”

See a larger version of the image at NASA’s Earth Observatory website.