Three NASA science missions traveled across Alaska this summer, flying above Arctic sea ice, permafrost, and mountain glaciers. The projects are tracking changes in the warming Arctic.
"We can't do everything with satellites," Tom Wagner, NASA's cryospheric sciences program manager, said during a media teleconference Sept. 16, according to LiveScience.
The Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) inspects permafrost two weeks out of every month in a C-23 Sherpa aircraft equipped with instruments that measure greenhouse gases.
Large areas of Alaska, Canada and northern Russia have permafrost, soil that remains frozen the entire year. Permafrost soils are warming even faster than Arctic air temperatures however, increasing as much as 2.7 to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 30 years.
"As heat from Earth's surface penetrates into permafrost, it threatens to mobilize these organic carbon reservoirs and release them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, upsetting the Arctic's carbon balance and greatly exacerbating global warming," Charles Miller, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement to LiveScience.
Scientists are trying to decide whether atmospheric levels of these gases are higher above permafrost than in other areas.
The interaction between the atmosphere and the melting ice is also a focus for the new Arctic Radiation IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE), which launched this summer.
The experiment is designed to measure how clouds help or hurt global warming above Arctic sea ice. Clouds reflect sunlight, which cools the Earth, but they can also trap heat radiating from the planet, increasing surface temperatures, said Bill Smith, principal investigator for ARISE at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, according to LiveScience.
ARISE scientists want to try untangling this tricky relationship next.
As the researchers scan clouds and ice offshore Alaska in a NASA C-130 Hercules aircraft, the agency's satellites will also watch the same spots.
The collection of data will help improve Arctic satellite monitoring, Smith said.
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