At a weekend science camp in the remote village of Bautista, Philippines, the faces of students at Coloscaoyan National High School quickly changed from skepticism to excitement when they realized that the NASA scientist speaking to them on Zoom was in fact not artificial intelligence. According to the Deputy Executive Director of the Department of Science and Technology of the Philippine Science High School System, “Many of them expressed disbelief that an actual NASA scientist would have time for them or engage with them… We can’t express enough how thankful we are for your time and for the impact you have on those students… Truly, you have left an indelible mark on each of those students and inspired many of them to become future scientists.”
This story is from one of 63 virtual student engagement events held for NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne Experiment (PACE-PAX). The mission used aircraft (the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter) and waterborne research vessels (R/V Blissfully,R/V Shearwater, and R/V Fish) to calibrate and validate the data from the PACE satellite, which was launched in February 2024. California was the main hub for the mission, with most of the airborne and waterborne activities occurring in Edwards, Marina, Long Beach, and Santa Barbara.
NASA Earth science missions are not only an opportunity to conduct great science but also to involve students and the general public in the scientific process. As the NASA Airborne Science Program (ASP) science communication lead, I host outreach events for students worldwide. For PACE-PAX, I reached over 2,600 students from transitional kindergarten through 12th grade from 25 schools in three countries (the United States, Philippines, and South Africa) and six states (California, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, New Hampshire, and Texas). Over 50 percent of these schools were located in California to highlight the state as the mission’s hub.
Each outreach event consisted of a customized presentation with a duration ranging from 10 minutes to an hour based on grade level and class availability, followed by a question-and-answer (Q&A) session for students to ask about PACE-PAX, NASA, or whatever they wanted. On some occasions, special guests from PACE-PAX were included in content creation, Q&A, or presentations: Ivona Cetinić (NASA GSFC), Bridget Seegers (NASA GSFC), Rachel Smith (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), Norm Nelson (University of California, Santa Barbara), or Brent McBride (University of Maryland, Baltimore County).
Nelson and Cetinić gave virtual tours of Nelson’s lab at UC Santa Barbara for 15 fifth-grade students at Washington Elementary School, also located in Santa Barbara, California. Additionally, Seegers gave virtual tours of her workspace, water filtration system, and other instruments onboard the R/V Blissfully for a total of 65 students from grades three, five, and six at schools located in Ohio, Illinois, and Texas. Our volunteers greatly enhanced the students’ experiences.
The schools included for PACE-PAX outreach represented a wide variety of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, academic levels, and demographics. Out of the 25 schools reached, 17 were American public schools, 2 were American private schools, and 6 were international schools. Notably, we reached 50 at-risk and 41 special education fifth-grade students at a school in a disadvantaged community in Corpus Christi, Texas; we hosted three bilingually interpreted events (two English/Spanish and one English/Tagalog); we reached 381 high schoolers in middle- or low-income municipalities in the Philippines. Finally, 30 presentations were delivered to students at schools that are part of the NASA-sponsored Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program.
These events were very well received. A group of transitional kindergarten students from Felton, California, even sent handmade cards to express their gratitude! As teachers noted, “This activity fueled the love for science in our students,” and “The class and I learned a lot and really enjoyed you and the presentation,” and “NASA truly rocks!” And as students noted, “Thank you for teaching us about PACE-PAX and what the satellites exploring Earth do. I learned that NASA doesn’t only explore outer space, but Earth too,” and that “Learning about the different types of plankton and aerosols was so much fun!”
I look forward to reconnecting with these students for the next NASA mission!
Photos published with permission via student photo releases from Coloscaoyan National High School, Empangeni High School, Philippine Science High School, and Wheaton Christian Grammar School.
After our adventures in Quebec and Greenland, it was now time for our last stop in this intense season of fieldwork. This time we were heading to the Canadian Northwest Territories (NWT). Extraordinary wildfire seasons have become a regular occurrence in the NWT. The territory’s 10-year average for the total number of fires was exceeded in 2022, with nearly 600,000 hectares burned in 256 fires. At the time, that was more than any year since the outlier season of 2014. This may seem like a lot, but 2023 was brutal and far more exceptional.
The 2023 record fire season totaled around 3.6 million hectares burned by 303 fires. About 70 percent of the territory’s population, including the capital Yellowknife, was evacuated in the summer of 2023. The current Canadian fire season is also shaping up to be one of the most extreme in the last two decades. These extreme fire seasons have a significant impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere. In response, our goal for this campaign was to obtain critical field observations to better estimate these emissions, so we packed our bags one last time for this summer and traveled as far north as Inuvik to begin our final data collections.
Despite the significant advances in understanding carbon emissions from boreal forest fires in recent years, there are still substantial gaps in our knowledge when it comes to high-latitude tundra fires. Field-based carbon combustion measurements from tundra fires are scarce, and although these fires have historically been less frequent than those in boreal forests, they can be substantial due to the availability of carbon-rich organic soils in these regions. Part of our team on this expedition has previous field experience with tundra fires, and we know that tussocks can be used as reference points to estimate how much of the soil organic layer was lost due to fire.
In 2023, a large tundra fire broke out near the town of Inuvik. North of the Arctic Circle, the fire is in a fairly remote area with no road or river access. So, we sampled this fire by helicopter in an effort to estimate and date carbon stocks and calculate the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. Along the fire perimeter, we found different types of dominant vegetation in the tundra, ranging from the tussocks to shrublands and even sparsely treed areas.
The view of the northern landscape was mesmerizing from above! The rolling hills stretched endlessly across the horizon, while the striking polygonal soil patterns and distinctive pingos added to the captivating view. The tundra was dotted with lakes of various sizes and ancient riverbeds. With paleo specialists Atte Korhola and Jan Weckström accompanying us, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to sample a lake and study the historical fire record preserved in its sediments. We are grateful to the Aurora Research Institute and the local community for welcoming us.
After an intense week in Inuvik, our team hit the road again, this time heading south to the Scotty Creek Research Station, about 50 kilometers from Fort Simpson. We began our journey from Yellowknife to Fort Simpson, uncertain whether the ongoing fires would allow us to travel. The smell of smoke was overwhelming, and the sight of the recently burned forest along the road was stark. Along the gravel road to Fort Simpson, we encountered bison, sampled some peatlands, and spent an hour waiting for a ferry. In the evening, we watched as the moon took on an intense red hue, tinted by the smoke particles in the air.
The next morning, we boarded a floatplane from the Mackenzie River to the Scotty Creek Research Station, where a friendly crew gave us a warm welcome. The research station is so isolated that it’s only accessible by plane. The creek, where the station is located, drains a 152-square-kilometer area of boreal forested peatland. Due to the permafrost in the region, significant thawing has transformed parts of the landscape from forested permafrost to treeless wetlands. In October 2022, the station suffered massive damage from an extraordinary late-season wildfire that raged for nearly 100 days before finally reaching the camp. The research station had just reopened during our stay there. This is good news for the entire scientific community, given the importance of this unique site in the heart of the boreal forest.
The goal of our Scotty Creek campaign was to sample the effects of fires on peatland ecosystems, aiming to better understand the climate change implications of wildfire in this fire-sensitive landscape. We spent three days in the field, sampling key ecosystems from sunrise until sunset.
A special shoutout goes to the station crew, whose professionalism made everything run smoothly. After long days of work, returning to camp was a treat, especially with our hosts preparing dinner for us. We’ll never forget their hospitality—thank you, Scotty Creek team!
And so, our journey comes to an end. It was a summer to remember, one filled with hard work but also moments of joy and discovery. People will read this post, and in the near future, others will study the findings of our field research. Our results may be cited and applied by fellow scientists. Yet, no data or paper can truly capture what this season of fieldwork was like. Only we hold those memories. The months of preparation that preceded the trip: developing research protocols, selecting sites, navigating logistics, and endless paperwork. The long hours driving both paved and dirt roads. Fieldwork under the scorching sun, and other days when cold rain chilled us to the bone. The relentless mosquitoes. Simple lunches in the field contrasted with the risotto made from mushrooms foraged at burned sites. The flat tire. The cracked car window. Lost pens. Inventorying more than 400 trees in a single plot. Charcoal covering our hands and faces day after day. Setting up camp in incredible, remote places. The joy of plunging into a cold lake after a hard day of work. Spontaneously stopping the car on our day off because the excitement of sampling two more sites was too hard to resist. Unexpectedly gaining four extra days in Greenland due to a canceled flight. Swimming in the frigid waters of a fjord. Climbing to the summit of a mountain.
We have had the privilege of visiting places most people will never see, and for that, we are deeply grateful. This chapter of fieldwork for our Ph.D. research is over, but the Arctic continues to warm, and intense fire seasons in these regions are here to stay. We are eager to better understand the complex interactions between these changes and Arctic-boreal fires. As we return home, our suitcases packed with data, the time for analyses begins—now from our offices, but with this field season always on our minds.
The NWT fires expedition was organized within the Research Council of Finland Academy Research Fellow project “Fire in the Arctic,” led by Meri Ruppel, and the Kone Foundation project FLARE. The fieldwork was also part of FireIce (Fire in the land of ice: climatic drivers & feedbacks), a Consolidator project led by Sander Veraverbeke and funded by the European Research Council. FireIce is affiliated with NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE).
This blog post was co-written by Lucas R. Diaz, a Ph.D. student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Sonja Granqvist, a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki, both studying Arctic-boreal fires.
Research Vessel (RV) Blissfully is a 30-foot sailboat that is the science lab and home for two sailing scientists, Captain Gordon Ackland and myself, Dr. Bridget Seegers. The RV Blissfully is a recent addition to the fleet of research vessels. Previously, Blissfully’s days were primarily spent peacefully floating snug in a San Diego boat slip with an occasional day sail. However, Blissfully was volunteered to support the PACE-PAX campaign and therefore transitioned a month ago into RV Blissfully.
In five slightly stress-filled days, research gear was loaded, Blissfully’s sitting area became a lab, and cables and instruments ready for deployment were hung from the stern. The goal is to gather ocean data for the validation of data from the exciting new PACE satellite. Now, RV Blissfully spends eight to 10 hours a day sailing for science.
Days on RV Blissfully begin in harbor with an alarm waking our sleeping research team. A thermos is quickly filled with coffee and poured into RV Blissfully crew mugs. Some mornings before departing, Bridget does video visits with classrooms of 4th and 6th graders, answering their questions about the ocean and life as a scientist.
Then, the dock lines are tossed, and a 2.5-hour morning commute begins. Leaping dolphins are frequently spotted along the way, and once a pair of fascinating mola molas were observed “swimming” along the surface.
The commute is also breakfast time, typically with yogurt, granola, and fruit.
A crew of two means everyone onboard fills many roles, including galley chef along with scientist, mechanic, and captain. The destination, 12 miles (20 kilometers) south, is an oil rig that is home to additional research instruments whose data will be combined with RV Blissfully’s data for a more complete picture of conditions in the atmosphere and ocean. The location is also a flyover target for the ER-2 and Twin Otter research planes, allowing for even more data sets for PACE validation.
Once on station, a bucket is tossed and 10-liters of water is gathered for a variety of samples, which are processed below deck. These water samples are filtered and frozen at -320ºF (196ºC) in liquid nitrogen or preserved in jars for further analysis when shipped back to the Ocean Ecology Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The analysis will produce data about the community of microscopic ocean organisms like phytoplankton and bacteria that are critical to understanding our ocean. Bridget takes the lead on the water filtering, and because the lab bench used to be a couch, it is literally at knee-height, and therefore she spends much time working on her knees.
Meanwhile on the stern, Gordon is measuring ocean light with an instrument called a HyperPro—he’s a real pro with the HyperPro.
Once logging begins, he lets the instrument fall to a depth of 20 meters before hauling it up to the surface and letting it descend again to 20 meters. This is repeated 15 times at each station, and the final cast goes to 60 meters to explore the ocean light further below. The HyperPro is critical for PACE validation because it measures light like the PACE Ocean Color Instrument, so it allows scientists to compare measurements from the ocean with light measured all the way in space.
The routine of collecting water samples and HyperPro profiles keeps the crew busy station after station.
Occasionally, the routine is broken by the spotting of wildlife or a wave through a porthole. The shifting waves and weather keep it interesting. The days are beautiful, exhausting, a bit tedious, and inspiring. All emotions fit onto RV Blissfully’s 30 feet out at sea. The winds pick up through the afternoon, so when the final station is done for the day, a sail is frequently raised for the return to harbor.
A sailboat significantly reduces the fuel used for research. RV Blissfully used 14 gallons of diesel over nine days of sampling, covering roughly 230 miles and providing data from 19 research stations. Eventually, RV Blissfully is docked, the instruments are rinsed, the crew wanders to shore for dinner as the sun sets, and after dinner they wander back to RV Blissfully for sleep—resting up to be ready for the rinse and repeat research routine to begin again.
This was the crew’s first sailing field campaign, and both Gordon and Bridget would like to do it again. They are grateful for all the friends, family, and colleagues whose support made it possible. Accomplishing PACE-PAX research on RV Blissfully made the sailing for science dream a reality.
Thursday August 12, 2024: PACE-PAX Day 10 of 28
We are in the field supporting PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment), a multi-disciplinary mission that involves two aircraft—the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter—and several mobile ocean assets, all helping to validate observations and data products from NASA’s new satellite observation platform, PACE. Our days typically start with an initial look at the weather in the area of operations and airport conditions during takeoff and landing. Both the ER-2 and Twin Otter will fly today since the weather is acceptable for launch, science, and landing.
After breakfast at the hotel, our small team with a big name (LARGE, or the Langley Aerosol Research Group) heads to a semi-abandoned former control tower at the Marina Municipal Airport to check on a set of instrumentation operating 24/7 on the 7th floor. LARGE measures the properties of ambient aerosols, which are small particles in the atmosphere that can affect climate, seed clouds, and degrade air quality. Satellite observations quantify the sunlight scattered by particles to retrieve more complex properties like the particle concentration, size, and composition. For PACE-PAX, we are most interested in how those particles scatter and absorb light, making direct measurements—from the tower and on the Twin Otter aircraft—to provide a ground-truth for both the PACE satellite and for the satellite-proxy instrumentation on the ER-2.
Three hours prior to takeoff, the science team meets with the two pilots for the CIRPAS (Center for Interdisciplinary Remotely Piloted Aircraft Studies) Twin Otter aircraft to discuss the day’s flight plan. The Twin Otter is operated by the Office of Naval Research and has been flying missions like PACE-PAX since 1998. Today’s plan will focus on satellite retrievals of aerosol properties over turbid, complex surface waters. The Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta and San Francisco Bay area will be our areas of operation due to their close proximity to Marina and their biologically active and heterogenous waterways. During this meeting, we describe our goals for the flight, the route, and key decision points to enable a successful mission. Our plan today will have three spiral maneuvers between an altitude of 10,000 feet (the functional ceiling for the Twin Otter during PACE-PAX) and our minimum safe flying altitude, a low-altitude transect of the San Francisco Bay, and a low approach at Moffett Field at NASA Ames Research Center.
Following the pilot briefing, the team goes out to the aircraft to start up instrumentation and replace consumables for flight. The current instrument suite is specifically designed for PACE-PAX, with contributions from NASA, NOAA, and NPS. We sample aerosols by bringing air into the cabin via an inlet referred to on the Twin Otter as the “snorkel,” which looks a little like a large black football on a stick that protrudes just past the nose of the aircraft. We then route the air through a series of tubes towards each of the nine instruments in the cabin. Measurements are made in real-time, so the flight scientist on the plane can monitor each instrument during flight and use the measurements to inform decisions about the location and altitude of the aircraft. It takes us approximately 30 minutes to prepare for the flight and make any necessary last-minute trips to the bathroom (no lavatory is available on the aircraft during the three- to four-hour flight!)
With an on-time departure from Marina, we did a counterclockwise circuit: 1) through the Central Valley of California and spiraling over a ground station at California State University Stanislaus; 2) spiraling over a site at the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta; 3) spiraling over the San Pablo Bay just north of San Francisco; 4) flying at altitudes of 1,000 to 2,500 feet over the San Francisco Bay; and finally 5) completing a low approach at Moffett Field before returning to base. Just before landing, the Twin Otter did two more low-level passes over the runaway at Marina Municipal Airport at an altitude of 70 feet to confirm consistency with the ground-based tower measurements and to evaluate the transmission of the snorkel inlet.
We observed generally clean conditions throughout the flight, since most of the wildfire smoke emissions in the region were being transported to the east and outside our flight domain. Those conditions will be perfect, though, for testing satellite retrieval algorithms under the most difficult conditions when there is low aerosol ‘signal’ in the atmosphere. As a bonus, we got to view the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline from a vantage point not often possible in airspace that is so congested with commercial traffic.
After accomplishing our objectives in flight, our day concludes by downloading all of the data collected on that flight and summarizing the science highlights with project management during a post-flight briefing. These meetings are used to track mission progress and to communicate objectives and flight plans for the following day. A typical airborne mission will have two to six flights per week with a flight window of up to six weeks. During today’s meeting, we were briefed on a plan to fly to Southern California to test the other end of the aerosol ‘signal’ spectrum by sampling wildfire smoke from the Bridge, Line, and Airport fires. We were back at the hotel in plenty of time to enjoy a Buffalo Bills blowout win over their division-rival Miami Dolphins, and back on the aircraft the following day.
Our next steps are to process the data and share it with the rest of the science team. This helps other instrument teams analyze their own data and the project leadership evaluate how successfully we completed our objectives for the flight. Once we complete our calibrations during and after the mission, we can perform one last set of quality checks, and then the data will be shared with the public as well.
Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the ship operations for the PACE-PAX campaign are underway!
The PACE satellite went into orbit in February 2024. Its mission is to help us better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide, as well as how aerosols can fuel phytoplankton blooms and help us track harmful algal blooms around the planet.
PACE-PAX stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem – Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (see why we made it shorter?) We are using two airplanes and three ships, among other free-sailing instruments, to gather data that will tell us how well our shiny new satellite, PACE, is doing. We compare our planet-side data with the space-side data so we can make sure we are providing the very best information about the health of the world’s oceans.
Our planes are the ER-2, which is a super high-flying plane that hangs out right near the edge of space, and the Twin Otter, which holds a variety of instruments that are vital to the aerosols part of the mission.
Our ships are the R/V Shearwater, the R/V Blissfully, and the small fleet of R/V Fish boats. The R/V Shearwater is the main ship for this campaign. She holds a science team from multiple organizations and a wide variety of instruments. These include some that stare at the Sun, some that go in the water, and some that stay on deck.
The R/V Blissfully is a sailboat located in Long Beach, California, that is taking an important subset of measurements to complement the Shearwater. She has a crew of just two people, so they are extra busy!
Finally, the R/V Fish are our rapid response vessels. They can move around much faster than the other two and can get to specific locations quickly to take critical measurements.
My job is to collect water samples and filter or store them for analysis back in the lab, all the way back in Maryland. The samples I collect will be analyzed with at least five different instruments, which cannot be brought out to sea. There’s not enough space, and some of the instruments have dangerous elements that are not worth the risk of using while on a boat. There is also the issue of space. You can only bring so much to sea, so we take and preserve samples that can wait for analysis.
PACE-PAX is unique in that our cruises are day cruises. Usually, we get on a boat and don’t get off until the campaign is over. That can be days to weeks to even months living on a ship! This time we get to go back to a hotel in the evenings, which feels very odd in comparison. It can be hard to get your sea legs when you aren’t given time to get used to the motion. I have been relying on medication, ginger, and very salty snacks to get me used to the motion in the ocean.
I hope you enjoy learning more about this campaign in future Notes!
