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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 505 records · Page 28
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1978

Earth Radiation Budget Science, 1978. 1: Introduction

An earth radiation budget satellite system (ERBSS) is planned in order to understand climate on various temporal and spatial scales. The system consists of three satellites and is designed to obtain radiation budget data from the earth's surface. Among the topics discussed are the climate modeling and climate diagnostics, the applications of radiation modeling to ERBSS, and the influence of albedo clouds on radiation budget and atmospheric circulation.

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NASA NTRS1981

The promise of remote sensing in the atmospheric sciences

The applications and advances in remote sensing technology for weather prediction, mesoscale meteorology, severe storms, and climate studies are discussed. Doppler radar permits tracking of the three-dimensional field of motion within storms, thereby increasing the accuracy of convective storm modeling. Single Doppler units are also employed for detecting mesoscale storm vortices and tornado vortex signatures with lead times of 30 min. Clear air radar in pulsed and high resolution FM-CW forms reveals boundary layer convection, Kelvin-Helmoltz waves, shear layer turbulence, and wave motions. Lidar is successfully employed for stratospheric aerosol measurements, while Doppler lidar provides data on winds from the ground and can be based in space. Sodar is useful for determining the structure of the PBL. Details and techniques of satellite-based remote sensing are presented, and results from the GWE and FGGE experiments are discussed.

Atlas, D.↗
NASA NTRS1983

Multidisciplinary research in the space sciences

Research activities were carried out in the following areas during this reporting period: (1) astrophysics; (2) climate and atmospheric modeling; and (3) climate applications of earth observations & geological studies. An ultra-low-noise 115 GHz receiver based upon a superconducting tunnel diode mixer has been designed and constructed. The first laboratory tests have yielded spectacular results: a single-sideband noise temperature of 75 K considerably more sensitive than any other receiver at this frequency. The receiver will replace that currently in use on the Columbia-GISS CO Sky Survey telescope. The 1.2 meter millimeter-wave telescope at Columbia University has been used to complete two large-scale surveys of molecular matter in the part of the inner galaxy which is visible from the Northern hemisphere (the first galactic quadrant); one of the distant galaxy and one of the solar neighborhood. The research conducted during the past year in the climate and atmospheric modeling programs has been focused on the development of appropriate atmospheric and upper ocean models, and preliminary applications of these models. Principal models are a one-dimensional radiative-convective model, a three-dimensional global climate model, and an upper ocean model. During the past year this project has focused on development of 2-channel satellite analysis methods and radiative transfer studies in support of multichannel analysis techniques.

Broecker, W. S.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Atmospheric Research 2012 Technical Highlights

This annual report, as before, is intended for a broad audience. Our readers include colleagues within NASA, scientists outside the Agency, science graduate students, and members of the general public. Inside are descriptions of atmospheric research science highlights and summaries of our education and outreach accomplishments for calendar year 2012.The report covers research activities from the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Laboratory, the Climate and Radiation Laboratory, the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory, and the Wallops Field Support Office under the Office of Deputy Director for Atmospheres, Earth Sciences Division in the Sciences and Exploration Directorate of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. The overall mission of the office is advancing knowledge and understanding of the Earths atmosphere. Satellite missions, field campaigns, peer-reviewed publications, and successful proposals are essential to our continuing research.

Climate↗
NASA NTRS2004

Preliminary Assessment of Mars Exploration Rover Landing Site Predictions

Selection of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) landing sites took place over a three year period in which engineering constraints were identified, 155 possible sites were downselected to the final two, surface environments and safety considerations were developed, and the potential science return at the sites was considered. Landing sites in Gusev crater and Meridiani Planum were selected because they appeared acceptably safe for MER landing and roving and had strong morphologic and mineralogical indicators of liquid water in their past and thus appeared capable of addressing the science objectives of the MER missions, which are to determine the aqueous, climatic, and geologic history of sites on Mars where conditions may have been favorable to the preservation of evidence of possible pre-biotic or biotic processes. Engineering constraints important to the selection included: latitude (10 N-15 S) for maximum solar power; elevation (<-1.3 km) for sufficient atmosphere to slow the lander; low horizontal winds, shear and turbulence in the last few kilometers to minimize horizontal velocity; low 10-m scale slopes to reduce airbag spinup and bounce; moderate rock abundance to reduce abrasion or stroke-out of the airbags; and a radar-reflective, load-bearing and trafficable surface safe for landing and roving that is not dominated by fine-grained dust. In selecting the MER landing sites these engineering constraints were addressed via comprehensive evaluation of surface and atmospheric characteristics from existing remote sensing data and models as well as targeted orbital information acquired from Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey. This evaluation resulted in a number of predictions of the surface characteristics of the sites, which are tested in this abstract. Relating remote sensing signatures to surface characteristics at landing sites allows these sites to be used as ground truth for the orbital data, is essential for selecting and validating landing sites for future missions, and is required for correctly interpreting the surfaces and materials globally present on Mars.

Golombek, M.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Visit to an Ocean Planet

"Visit to an Ocean Planet" is an interactive, educational CD-ROM that reveals the importance of our oceans to global climate and life. It is designed to complement middle and high school science curricula, as well as to be enjoyed by the general public. The CD-ROM allows users to explore the Gulf of Mexico with satellite data, investigate the 1997-1998 El Nino, discover "what's up" with Earth-orbiting satellites, and learn about the real life oceanographers. The curriculum background material are arranged in the context of widely accepted teaching themes. The CD-ROM also highlights results from the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite launched by NASA and the Centre National Etudes Spatiales (CNES). It has been measuring our oceans since 1992. This product is a result of NASA's commitment to involve the educational community in endeavors to inspire America's students, create learning opportunities, and enlighten inquisitive minds.

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NASA NTRS2000

MVACS Robotic Arm

The primary purpose of the Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor (MVACS) Robotic Arm is to support to the other MVACS science instruments by digging trenches in the Martian soil; acquiring and dumping soil samples into the thermal evolved gas analyzer (TEGA); positioning the Soil Temperature Probe (STP) in the soil: positioning the Robotic Arm Air Temperature Sensor (RAATS) at various heights above the surface, and positioning the Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) for taking images of the surface, trench, soil samples, magnetic targets and other objects of scientific interest within its workspace.

robotics robotic arm sampling MVACS↗
NASA NTRS2010

TERRA Battery Thermal Control Anomaly - Simulation and Corrective Actions

The TERRA spacecraft was launched in December 1999 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, becoming the flagship of NASA's Earth Observing System program to gather data on how the planet's processes create climate. Originally planned as a 5 year mission, it still provides valuable science data after nearly 10 years on orbit. On October 13th, 2009 at 16:23z following a routine inclination maneuver, TERRA experienced a battery cell failure and a simultaneous failure of several battery heater control circuits used to maintain cell temperatures and gradients within the battery. With several cells nearing the minimum survival temperature, preventing the electrolyte from freezing was the first priority. After several reset attempts and power cycling of the control electronics failed to reestablish control authority on the primary side of the controller, it was switched to the redundant side, but anomalous performance again prevented full heater control of the battery cells. As the investigation into the cause of the anomaly and corrective action continued, a battery thermal model was developed to be used in determining the control ability remaining and to simulate and assess corrective actions. Although no thermal model or detailed reference data of the battery was available, sufficient information was found to allow a simplified model to be constructed, correlated against pre-anomaly telemetry, and used to simulate the thermal behavior at several points after the anomaly. It was then used to simulate subsequent corrective actions to assess their impact on cell temperatures. This paper describes the rapid development of this thermal model, including correlation to flight data before and after the anomaly., along with a comparative assessment of the analysis results used to interpret the telemetry to determine the extent of damage to the thermal control hardware, with near-term corrective actions and long-term operations plan to overcome the anomaly.

Grob, Eric W.↗
NASA NTRS2017

The Future of Evapotranspiration: Global Requirements for Ecosystem Functioning, Carbon and Climate Feedbacks, Agricultural Management, and Water Resources

The fate of the terrestrial biosphere is highly uncertain given recent and projected changes in climate. This is especially acute for impacts associated with changes in drought frequency and intensity on the distribution and timing of water availability. The development of effective adaptation strategies for these emerging threats to food and water security are compromised by limitations in our understanding of how natural and managed ecosystems are responding to changing hydrological and climatological regimes. This information gap is exacerbated by insufficient monitoring capabilities from local to global scales. Here, we describe how evapotranspiration (ET) represents the key variable in linking ecosystem functioning, carbon and climate feedbacks, agricultural management, and water resources, and highlight both the outstanding science and applications questions and the actions, especially from a space-based perspective, necessary to advance them.

Fisher, Joshua B.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Assimilated Hydrological Data at NASA GES DISC with Examples of Extreme Events

Extreme weather and climate events, such as heavy rainfall, heatwave, floods and droughts, and strong wind, can have devastating impacts on society. NASA and NOAA, based on independent analyses, recently announced that global surface temperatures in 2018 are the fourth warmest since 1880, behind only those of 2016, 2017, and 2015 (nasa.gov). Also in 2018, the United States experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters, ranking as the fourth highest total number of such events, behind only the years 2017, 2011, and 2016 (climate.gov). Many research studies have focused on acquiring observational and modeling data, to reveal linkages between increasing extreme events, global water and energy cycle, and global climate change. However, draw conclusions is still a challenge. NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center is one of twelve NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) data centers that process, archive, document, and distribute data from Earth science missions and related projects. The GES DISC hosts a wide range of remotely-sensed and model data and provides reliable and robust data access and services to users worldwide. This presentation provides a few examples of extreme event study that use Land Surface Model (LSM) assimilated, quality-controlled, and spatially and temporally consistent, hydrological data from the GES DISC. Also provided is a summary table for the hydrological data holdings, along with discussions of recent updates to data and data services.

Rui, Hualan↗
NASA NTRS2021

PBL Height from AIRS, GPS RO, and MERRA-2 Products in NASA GES DISC and Their 10 Year Seasonal Mean Intercomparison

Within the planetary boundary layer (PBL), surface forcing response, drag, turbulence, and vertical mixing are important processes and play a more critical role here than in the overlying “free atmosphere”. The PBL Height (PBLH) is an important parameter in climate models, weather forecasts, and air quality prediction. The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) provides data processing, archiving, and distribution services for numerous Earth science products. PBLH is a parameter in three products served by GES DISC, which are from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) experiment, and the NASA reanalysis product Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications – 2 (MERRA-2). These products have different spatial and temporal resolutions and coverages, and their PBLH definitions are also different. To better serve the PBL research community, we have summarized the specifications of these products. A ten-year seasonal mean intercomparison is also conducted to provide further guidance to users. The intercomparison results show that MERRA-2 has a much shallower PBL than AIRS and GPS RO. An experimental study indicates the different PBLH definition in MERRA-2 caused smaller values of PBLH. The improvement of the water vapor retrieval in AIRS version 7 over version 6 results in the version 7 PBLH agreeing better with GPS RO and MERRA-2 than version 6, especially near the equator and low latitudes.

Feng Ding↗
NASA NTRS2021

Climate Scenarios and Reality

Progress on the important issue of climate change requires a framework for evaluating the likely consequences of different courses of action. Science can powerfully inform public decisions on energy systems, infrastructure, and economic policy when researchers explore, using the best available evidence, a range of possible futures using emissions scenarios. The process of constructing, describing, and using these scenarios is challenging for many reasons. The continued evolution and improvement of emissions scenarios is an important element of the future of climate-change research. But in “How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality” (Issues, Summer 2021), Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Ritchie are wildly off base in declaring that the “misuse of scenarios in climate research has become pervasive and consequential—so much so that we view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first century thus far.”

climate change↗
NASA NTRS2024

Observational Constraint on A Feedback From Supercooled Clouds Reduces Projected Warming Uncertainty

The increase of carbon-dioxide-doubling-induced warming (climate sensitivity) in the latest climate models is primarily attributed to a larger extratropical cloud feedback. This is thought to be partly driven by a greater ratio of supercooled liquid-phase clouds to all clouds, termed liquid phase ratio. We use an instrument simulator approach to show that this ratio has increased in the latest climate models and is overestimated rather than underestimated as previously thought. In our analysis of multiple models, a greater ratio corresponds to stronger negative cloud feedback, in contradiction with single-model-based studies. We trace this unexpected result to a cloud feedback involving a shift from supercooled to warm clouds as climate warms, which corresponds to greater cloud amount and optical depth and weakens the extratropical cloud feedback. Better constraining this ratio in climate models – and thus this supercooled cloud feedback – impacts their climate sensitivities by up to 1 ˚C and reduces inter-model spread.

Climate and Earth system modelling↗
NASA NTRS1998

Project S'COOL

The Students Clouds Observations On-Line or S'COOL project was piloted in 1997. It was created with the idea of using students to serve as one component of the validation for the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument which was launched with the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) in November, 1997. As part of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise CERES is interested in the role clouds play in regulating our climate. Over thirty schools became involved in the initial thrust of the project. The CERES instrument detects the location of clouds and identifies their physical properties. S'COOL students coordinate their ground truth observations with the exact overpass of the satellite at their location. Their findings regarding cloud type, height, fraction and opacity as well as surface conditions are then reported to the NASA Langley Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). The data is then accessible to both the CERES team for validation and to schools for educational application via the Internet. By March of 1998 ninety-three schools, in nine countries had enrolled in the S'COOL project. Joining the United States participants were from schools in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The project is gradually becoming the global project envisioned by the project s creators. As students obtain the requested data useful for the scientists, it was hoped that students with guidance from their instructors would have opportunity and motivation to learn more about clouds and atmospheric science as well.

Green, Carolyn J.↗
NASA NTRS2018

High-Resolution Modeling of the Dust and Water Cycles with the NASA Ames Mars Global Climate Model

NASA’s Mars Climate Modeling Center at Ames Research Center is currently undergoing an exciting period of growth in personnel, modeling capabilities, and science productivity. We are transitioning from our legacy Arakawa C-grid finite-difference dynamical core to the NOAA/GFDL cubed-sphere finite-volume dynamical core for simulating the climate of Mars in a global framework. This highly parallelized core is scalable and flexible, which allows for significant improvements in the horizontal and vertical resolutions of our simulations. We have implemented the Ames water ice cloud microphysics package described in Haberle et al. (2018) into this new dynamical core. We will present high-resolution simulations of the dust and water cycles that show that sub-degree horizontal resolution improves the agreement between the vertical distribution of dust and water ice and observations. In particular, both water ice clouds and dust are transported to higher altitudes due to stronger topographic circulations at high resolution. Preliminary results suggest that high-resolution global modeling is needed to properly capture critical features of the dust and water cycles, and thus the current Mars climate.

Kahre, Melinda A.↗
NASA NTRS2000

EOSDIS: Archive and Distribution Systems in the Year 2000

Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) is a long-term NASA research mission to study the processes leading to global climate change. The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a NASA campaign of satellite observatories that are a major component of ESE. The EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is another component of ESE that will provide the Earth science community with easy, affordable, and reliable access to Earth science data. EOSDIS is a distributed system, with major facilities at seven Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) located throughout the United States. The EOSDIS software architecture is being designed to receive, process, and archive several terabytes of science data on a daily basis. Thousands of science users and perhaps several hundred thousands of non-science users are expected to access the system. The first major set of data to be archived in the EOSDIS is from Landsat-7. Another EOS satellite, Terra, was launched on December 18, 1999. With the Terra launch, the EOSDIS will be required to support approximately one terabyte of data into and out of the archives per day. Since EOS is a multi-mission program, including the launch of more satellites and many other missions, the role of the archive systems becomes larger and more critical. In 1995, at the fourth convening of NASA Mass Storage Systems and Technologies Conference, the development plans for the EOSDIS information system and archive were described. Five years later, many changes have occurred in the effort to field an operational system. It is interesting to reflect on some of the changes driving the archive technology and system development for EOSDIS. This paper principally describes the Data Server subsystem including how the other subsystems access the archive, the nature of the data repository, and the mass-storage I/O management. The paper reviews the system architecture (both hardware and software) of the basic components of the archive. It discusses the operations concept, code development, and testing phase of the system. Finally, it describes the future plans for the archive.

Behnke, Jeanne↗
NASA NTRS2017

University-Level Teaching of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change (AGCC) via Student Inquiry

This paper reviews university-level efforts to improve understanding of anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC) through curricula that enable student scientific inquiry. We examined 152 refereed publications and proceedings from academic conferences and selected 26 cases of inquiry learning that overcome specific challenges to AGCC teaching. This review identifies both the strengths and weaknesses of each of these case studies. It is the first to go beyond examining the impact of specific inquiry instructional approaches to offer a synthesis of cases. We find that inquiry teaching can succeed by concretising scientific processes, providing access to global data and evidence, imparting critical and higher order thinking about AGCC science policy and contextualising learning with places and scientific facts. We recommend educational researchers and scientists collaborate to create and refine curricula that utilise geospatial technologies, climate models and communication technologies to bring students into contact with scientists, climate data and authentic AGCC research processes. Many available science education technologies and curricula also require further research to maximise trade-offs between implementation and training costs and their educational value.

university level↗
NASA NTRS2015

Climate Data Initiative: A Geocuration Effort to Support Climate Resilience

Curation is traditionally defined as the process of collecting and organizing information around a common subject matter or a topic of interest and typically occurs in museums, art galleries, and libraries. The task of organizing data around specific topics or themes is a vibrant and growing effort in the biological sciences but to date this effort has not been actively pursued in the Earth sciences. In this paper, we introduce the concept of geocuration and define it as the act of searching, selecting, and synthesizing Earth science data/metadata and information from across disciplines and repositories into a single, cohesive, and useful collection. We present the Climate Data Initiative (CDI) project as a prototypical example. The CDI project is a systematic effort to manually curate and share openly available climate data from various federal agencies. CDI is a broad multi-agency effort of the U.S. government and seeks to leverage the extensive existing federal climate-relevant data to stimulate innovation and private-sector entrepreneurship to support national climate-change preparedness. We describe the geocuration process used in the CDI project, lessons learned, and suggestions to improve similar geocuration efforts in the future.

Metada↗