NASA visits Yellowknife
Flights are mapping the NWT, data won't be available until new year: chief scientist
Emelie Peacock
Northern News Services
Friday, June 16, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A research aircraft used by NASA to map climate change in the Arctic paid a visit to Yellowknife Wednesday.
Troy Asher, research test pilot at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center, is the pilot aboard the Gulfstream III during its flights across the Arctic for the ABoVE project. - Emelie Peacock/NNSL photo |
The Gulfstream III aircraft, used by NASA's eight- to 10-year Arctic-Boreale Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) to map changes in the Arctic land and water, is flying over parts of Alaska and the western Arctic this summer.
While NASA has previously focused many of its studies on Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean, chief support scientist Peter Griffith said this is the first real focus of NASA on this part of the Arctic.
"This area of the planet has undergone some of the most rapid warming in the past couple of decades of anywhere on Earth," he said, adding it is also the place in the Arctic where most people live.
Griffith said changes here have local, regional and global consequences.
He spoke of the extreme fire season in 2014, which deposited a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"[The fires] also deposited massive amounts of black carbon on the surface of the ice in Greenland," he said.
"What does that do? It makes the ice dark in colour and then all of a sudden you've got accelerated melting of the ice in an area that's far from here."
Despite heralding changes soon to come in other parts of the world, Griffith said the Arctic is off the "mental map" of most North Americans.
Griffith said it will be several months before the data gathered on these flights will be available to analyze, yet he said a smaller aircraft, used for gathering data on methane and carbon dioxide, has picked up increases in Alaska.
"We could see, up on the north slope of Alaska last week for instance, that there was some elevated CO2 near ground level," he said. "Indicating that respiration had already started up even though it was still covered with ice and snow in many areas."
Once the data is processed, NASA will make it available for download as per its open-data policy.
A second Gulfstream III aircraft was meant to join the first one in Yellowknife Wednesday, yet was delayed due to a lightning strike earlier this month. The aircraft sustained minor damage when it was hit by lightning on approach to landing in Fairbanks, Alaska.
A piece of the tail of the aircraft had to be replaced, putting it a few days behind schedule.
Troy Asher, research test pilot on the Gulfstream III, said aircraft getting struck by lightning is not common but it does happen.
Normally, he said, there is little damage to electrical systems or crew. Asher said the NASA research aircraft have strict rules to stay away from thunderstorms.
"We tend to use military rules," he said. "Our military rules make us stay about 20 to 25 miles away from thunderstorms. U.S. Air Force uses that. Lower altitude is 10 miles, and higher altitudes is 20 to 25 miles depending on the system."
NASA is not alone in carrying out the experiment, it involves several U.S. federal agencies, Polar Knowledge Canada, satellites and scientists from across the U.S. and Canada. The research collected by the aircraft is looked at alongside what researchers on the ground are finding.
On Wednesday, for example, the aircraft flew over Scotty Creek, where soil moisture and thaw depth are being studied by researchers on the ground.
The NASA team will use this research to get a better sense of what they see on the radar the flights pick up.
"This experiment, I think, is many years in the planning, at least four or five years in the planning so far. And there are hundreds of people involved," said Jim Miller, technical staff aboard the G-III.
"So it's quite a significant experiment."
