RELEASE: 01-32
RESEARCHERS TRACE EVOLVING PACIFIC AIR CHEMISTRY
Spring has arrived in Hong Kong and so have research planes, scientists
and a lot of equipment. By studying the seasonal airflow from Asia
across the Pacific, NASA scientists believe it is an ideal time
to collect information used to study how natural and human-induced
changes affect our global climate.
The Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-
P) experiment will use two specially equipped NASA aircraft to
measure gases and identify the chemical makeup of air off the East
Asian coast over the Pacific Ocean.
The TRACE-P mission, headed by NASA's Langley Research Center
in Hampton, VA, starts its 45-day operations this month from Hong
Kong and finishes at Yokota Air Force Base near Tokyo.
In addition to a DC-8 from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center,
Edwards, CA, and a P-3B from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops
Island, VA, satellites and ground stations will play a role, as
scientists gather information to plan flight patterns and interpret
measurements taken on the aircraft.
"While NASA administers the TRACE-P program, it's important
to realize all of the expertise that's necessary to make the measurements
on these aircraft," said Dr. Jim Crawford, TRACE-P Deputy
Mission Scientist and Langley researcher. "We have to bring
together researchers from international universities, other government
labs and from within NASA to make an adequate assessment of what's
happening over the Pacific."
A major goal of TRACE-P is to understand the chemical makeup and
reactions of air coming from Asia. Researchers want to study how
the chemical reactions and movement affect the air as it moves
away from Asia across the Pacific. With rapid industrialization
and increased energy use, mostly in the form of fossil fuel, scientists
expect emissions to increase as East Asia continues to develop.
"Out of all the industrialized regions in the world, North
America and Europe are at a much higher latitude," Crawford
added. "And since air chemistry is driven by sunlight, the
Asian emissions happening at a tropical latitude potentially have
a very different chemical evolution."
TRACE-P is part of the long series of NASA Global Tropospheric
Experiments (GTE) and a follow-up to earlier atmospheric science
investigations in 1991 and 1994. These exploratory missions studied
the Asian outflow -- air flowing over the continent to and across
the Pacific -- and how seasons and geography affect the chemistry
and movement of air.
GTE is aimed at a better understanding of worldwide chemistry
of the troposphere, which is the part of the atmosphere closest
to the Earth's surface. Over the past twenty years, GTE has conducted
missions in the Amazon, the Arctic, the tropical Atlantic and the
Pacific, to study both natural and man-made processes that determine
the troposphere's chemical make-up.
This international research effort is part of NASA's Office of
Earth Sciences Enterprise, Headquarters, Washington, DC. The Enterprise
is a long-term research effort dedicated to studying the Earth
System and how it is changing due to both natural and human-induced
processes.