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(Image Source: NASA) BY MADISON MACK
ANCHOR CANDICE AVILES NASA’s best known for their space exploration
— but their next mission will have them exploring our upper atmosphere.
NASA will be launching six unmanned drones into the upper regions of the troposphere as part
of the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment, or ATTREX, to study how water vapor and the
ozone interact.
In a statement, NASA says:
“Water vapor and ozone in the stratosphere can have a large impact on Earth’s climate.
The processes that drive the rise and fall of these compounds, especially water vapor,
are not well understood. This limits scientists’ ability to predict how these changes will
influence global climate in the future.”
You see, water vapor is actually the most common
greenhouse gas, absorbing infrared energy reflected of the surface of the earth and
warming it. Or it can act as a shield, protecting earth's surface from harmful UV rays. What
the vapor does depends on how high up in the atmosphere it is and scientists are still
not sure how humidity changes over these layers affects the global climate.
Per Our
Amazing Planet “When storms punch water vapor through the
tropopause, into the stratosphere, scientists suspect chemical reactions between water and
free radicals such as chlorine may zap and destroy the protective ozone. The NASA experiment
will sample this layer near the equator off the coast of Central America where tall thunderstorms
often occur.
The newly outfitted Global Hawk drone will be carrying a slew of new
scientific instruments to allow it measure meteorological conditions around the aircraft.
ATTREX
principal investigator Eric Jensen says
"The ATTREX payload will provide unprecedented
measurements of the tropical tropopause. This is our first opportunity to sample the tropopause
region during winter in the Northern Hemisphere when it is coldest and extremely dry air enters
the stratosphere."
ATTREX is one of the first of NASA’s new smaller,targeted low-cost
Venture missions