Powerful earth tracking satellite JPSS-2 for weather research
The third of a series of five polar-orbiting satellites developed by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to study Earth’s weather and environment will be launched on Tuesday (November 1).
Riding at the top Atlas V rocket From California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base, the JPSS-2 satellite, part of the Joint Polar Satellite System, blasts off to provide meteorologists and climate scientists with vital data to help predict extreme weather events and better understand how these events affect our planet.
JPSS-2 joins the Finland National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), which started in 2011, and NOAA-20, which started in 2017. JPSS-1polar track around The globe. JPSS-2 will be renamed NOAA-21 while in orbit and conducting scientific activities. Two new launches, JPSS-3 and JPSS-4, are planned for 2027 and 2032, respectively.
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In their polar orbits, the satellites circle the Earth 14 times a day. From that perspective, “JPSS-2 observes every location on Earth at least twice a day as the satellite orbits the Earth from pole to pole,” Tim Walsh, NOAA’s JPSS program director, said at a news conference in October. 4. “In order to predict the weather, we really need to be able to observe Earth’s atmosphere from this global perspective.”
To carry out its mission, JPSS-2 carries five key instruments into orbit, most of which are also at the Finnish nuclear power plant and NOAA-20.
Two of these instruments, the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) and the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), monitor the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere, giving weather forecasters a global 3D picture… the basic information required by forecast models. “, Walsh said.
These two instruments complement each other. CrIS is limited in how far it can see into clouds because infrared light is absorbed by water vapor, but ATMS’s microwave can penetrate clouds, allowing the device to see into the heart of storms.
The second instrument is called Libera, which has the same role as the less developed Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument at the Finnish Nuclear Power Plant and NOAA-20. These instruments investigate energy balance About the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, or how much energy is absorbed by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere compared to how much is released back into space, and how this affects Earth’s temperatures.
The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) monitors the ozone layer and searches for holes and how the concentration of ozone and other aerosols varies globally.
Finally, the Visual Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is “essentially the eyes of the satellite,” Walsh said. VIIRS captures images of the Earth’s surface, oceans and atmosphere in visible and infrared light, revealing how much snow and ice cover the planet, how much of the planet is covered by clouds (which can affect the energy balance), where haze covers the sky, the color of the ocean and how it relates to the abundance of microscopic phytoplankton, the health of chlorophyll-based vegetation and the behavior of hurricanes and floods, forest fires and dust storms.
In particular, the Joint Polar Satellite System project focuses on observing extreme weather phenomena in order to better understand them. For example, Hurricane Ianwhich struck the Caribbean, Cuba and the southeastern United States in late September, originally began as a tropical atmospheric wave off the coast of West Africa.
“A storm in Africa can influence the development of a hurricane that hits the East Coast; a typhoon in Japan can cause heavy rain in California several days later,” Walsh said.
This “butterfly effect” shows how interconnected Earth’s weather systems really are; The mission of the Joint Polar Satellite System project is to try to separate the factors affecting the Earth’s weather and environment on a global scale.
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