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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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Chemiluminescence of chemical compounds released in upper atmosphere and model of releases leading to upper atmospheric chemi-ionization
Model for Martian atmosphere and planetary surface assuming atmospheric spectrum with purely scattering properties and surface covered with limonite dust
Atmospheric structure and variability of earth atmosphere
Earth atmospheric radiation spectral influences on infrared measurements of planetary atmospheres
Atmospheric transmission of infrared radiation from 2 to 5 microns for slant paths between 35,000 feet and upper limit of atmosphere
A method for retrieving the atmospheric pressure corresponding to the tangent point of an infrared spectrum recorded in the solar occultation mode is described and applied to measurements made by the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) Fourier transform spectrometer. Tangent pressure values are inferred from measurements of isolated CO(sub 2) lines with temperature-insensitive intensities. Tangent pressures are determined with a spectroscopic precision of 1-3%, corresponding to a tangent point height precision, depending on the scale height, of 70-210 meters.
Spaceborne Global Positioning System (GPS) atmospheric science is blossoming. Proposed missions require high performance GPS flight receivers with capabilities beyond most space needs. With GPS technology maturing, and lower cost spaceborne receivers, GPS usage is expanding rapidly for space flight projects. Several of these are discussed, such as atmospheric occultation, ionospheric imaging, etc.
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the EOS Aqua Spacecraft was launched on May 4, 2002. Early in the mission, the AIRS instrument demonstrated its value to the weather forecasting community with better than 6 hours of improvement on the 5 day forecast. Now with over eight years of consistent and stable data from AIRS, scientists are able to examine processes governing weather and climate and look at seasonal and interannual trends from the AIRSdata with high statistical confidence. Naturally, long-term climate trends require a longer data set, but indications are that the Aqua spacecraft and the AIRS instrument should last beyond 2018. This paper briefly describes the AIRS data products and presents some of the most significant findings involving the use of AIRS data in the areas of weather forecast improvement, climate processes and model validation, cloud and polar processes, and atmospheric composition (chemistry and dust).
Korea’s second geostationary meteorological satellite, Geo-Kompsat-2A (Geostationary-Korean Multi-Purpose Satellite-2A, GK2A), was successfully launched on 4 December 2018. GK2Agenerates Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) every 10 min in the full disk area. This data hasbeen disseminated via Global Telecommunication System (GTS) since 25 October 2019. This articleevaluates the quality of GK2A AMVs in the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) atmosphericdata assimilation system (ADAS). The data show slow wind speed biases at 200–300 hPa and 600–800hPa in the northern and southern hemispheres. These biases are caused by observation heightassignment errors near jet streams. The Equivalent Blackbody Temperature (EBBT) method of GK2Atends to assign clouds at higher altitude, which mainly causes slow wind speed biases, especially inthe lower atmosphere. The IR/WV intercept method of GK2A assigns clouds slightly lower in theatmospheric layers below the altitude of 400 hPa, which causes positive biases. Quality control (QC)criteria to select the most suitable GK2A AMV data for assimilation are presented based on thesequality assessments. A new QC criterion utilizing height errors within the GEOS ADAS is introducedto exclude data with slow wind speed biases and large errors. GEOS forecast accuracy is slightlyimproved after assimilating GK2A AMVs along with other conventional, radiance, and satellitewinds which include AMVs made by the Himawari-8 satellite in nearly the same observational areaof GK2A. Additionally, the present work shows that GEOS forecasts can be significantly improved,especially in the tropics and southern hemisphere after assimilating GK2A data in the absence ofHimawari-8 AMVs. This study demonstrates that GK2A AMV data is a valuable data source toenhance the robustness of GEOS ADAS.
Atmospheric viscous dissipation energy relationships, calculating Martian atmosphere thermal structure
Discussion of the effects of atmospheric scattering and/or absorption on discrimination between target and background materials in environmental or natural science remote sensing applications. The spectral region considered lies between 0.4 and 3 microns. The results are presented parametrically and include an interesting effect that neighboring materials have on the spectral character of a target as a result of aerosol scattering by atmospheric haze.
Results of some comparisons that have been made of line profiles and equivalent widths computed from atmospheric models where the scattering has been represented by the Mie theory and a simple analytic expression, the Heyney-Greenstein function. These results show that the spectroscopic features for these models are indistinguishable and demonstrate the value of using this simple analytic function in terms of the great saving in computer time when computing synthetic spectra for any cloudy planetary atmosphere.
The neutral-atmosphere composition experiment instrumentation is designed to obtain in-situ measurements of neutral thermosphere composition from Atmosphere Explorer-C, -D, and -E. The system is based on previously flown OGO-6 and San Marco-3 composition instruments. The mass-spectrometer sensor includes a gold-plated thermalizing chamber and ion source, a hyperbolic rod quadrupole analyzer, and an off-axis electron multiplier. Automatic ion-source sensitivity control and pulse-counting techniques provide density measurement capability from approximately 125 to 1000 km altitude. The normal operating mode includes measurement at all masses in the range of 1 to 44 amu, with emphasis on hydrogen, helium, oxygen, nitrogen, and argon.
Results are reported for a field test that was aimed at acquiring a sufficient set of measurements of aerosol properties required as input for radiative-transfer calculations relevant to the earth's radiation balance. These measurements include aerosol extinction and size distributions, vertical profiles of aerosols, and radiation fluxes. Physically consistent, vertically inhomogeneous models of the aerosol characteristics of a turbid atmosphere over a desert and an agricultural region are constructed by using direct and indirect sampling techniques. These results are applied for a theoretical interpretation of airborne radiation-flux measurements. The absorption term of the complex refractive index of aerosols is estimated, a regional variation in the refractive index is noted, and the magnitude of solar-radiation absorption by aerosols and atmospheric molecules is determined.
The simultaneous inference of pressure and gas concentration in a remote-sensing experiment will increase the accuracy of inverted gas concentrations and minimize the dependence of the experiment on pressure or mass-path error resulting from use of climatological pressure data, satellite ephemeris, and instrument pointing accuracy. A technique for obtaining tangent-point pressure information needed for inversion of gas concentration in an IR solar occultation experiment is described. By measuring IR absorption in bands of atmospheric CO2 (e.g., 2.0, 2.7, or 4.3 microns) pressure values for each layer (2 km or less in the vertical) of the atmosphere can be obtained with rms errors of less than 3%.
This document presents the results of an extensive survey and comparative evaluation of current atmosphere and wind models for inclusion in the Langley Atmospheric Information Retrieval System (LAIRS). It includes recommended models for use in LAIRS, estimated accuracies for the recommended models, and functional specifications for the development of LAIRS.
The radiogenic and primordial noble gas contents of the Venus, earth, and Mars atmospheres are compared with one another and with the noble gas content of other extraterrestrial samples, particularly meteorites. Key trends in the primordial noble gas content of terrestrial planetary atmospheres are shown to include: (1) a several-orders-of-magnitude decrease in Ne-20 and Ar-36 from Venus to earth to Mars; (2) a nearly constant Ne-20/Ar-36 ratio, which is comparable to that found in the more primitive carbonaceous chondrites and which is two orders of magnitude smaller than the solar ratio; (3) a sizable fractionation of Ar, Kr, and Xe from their solar ratios, though the degree of fractionation (especially for Ar-36/Xe-132) appears to decrease systematically from carbonaceous chondrites to Mars to earth to Venus; and (4) large differences in Ne and Xe isotopic ratios among earth, meteorites, and the sun. It is suggested that the grain-accretion hypothesis can explain all four trends, though the assumptions needed to achieve this agreement are far from proven.
The various methods of calculating the atmospheric aerosol backscattering function, beta(CO2), both from measured aerosol characteristics and from optical measurements made at other wavelengths, are discussed in detail, with limits placed on their accuracy. The most significant factor in determining beta(CO2) is found to be the aerosol size distribution and concentration; this should be known accurately for particle radii up to at least 1 micron for stratospheric particles and 5 microns for tropospheric particles. Results are then presented from the modeling of the aerosol backscattering function at a wavelength of 10.6 microns in the lowest 20 km of the atmosphere. It is found that beta(CO2) varies from 10 to the -6th per m per sr in the planetary boundary layer to less than 10 to the -11th per m per sr in the stratosphere. It is next shown that, with the exception of (NH4)2SO4-containing aerosols, whose size distributions have relatively large numbers of small particles, the variation of backscattering with CO2 wavelength is less than a factor of approximately 3. For such (NH4)2SO4 aerosol distributions, however, the variation of backscatter function with CO2 wavelengths between 9.1 and 11.1 microns may reach one order of magnitude.