NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Patrick Lynch

Scientist Bruce Wielicki addresses a gathering of about 70 people that met at the National Institute of Aerospace for four days this week to discuss the goals for the high priority Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission. NASA/Sean Smith

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Team members from across the U.S. gathered in Hampton this week to try to pin down their scientific goals for the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission. NASA’s Langley Research Center has taken the mission formulation lead for CLARREO, one of the agency’s next major climate science missions.

The group met Tuesday through Friday at the National Institute of Aerospace with the goal of better defining the mission’s science objectives and setting CLARREO on a path to pass a scheduled mission concept review this December. About 70 scientists, engineers and managers came from Langley, Goddard Space Flight Center, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA headquarters.

CLARREO is classified as one of the highest priority climate science missions. Its goals were outlined as what is called a Tier 1 mission by the National Research Council, whose Decadal Survey serves as the climate science community’s research roadmap.

Broadly, CLARREO aims to measure some key climate change signals to an accuracy and at a time scale never achieved. An overarching goal of the mission is to be the first to provide accurate observations that can serve as a measuring stick for climate models at a decadal time scale. In other words, CLARREO could help prove right or wrong what climate models are predicting will happen in Earth’s atmosphere over periods of 10, 20 and 30 years, for example. Currently that capability does not exist, and climate models are judged on a shorter time scale.

“We have to get away from looking at the bark on the tree and step back and see how the whole forest is evolving, which is what CLARREO’s mission is about,” said Bruce Wielicki, Langley’s senior scientist for Earth science and CLARREO’s mission scientist.

Dave F. Young, CLARREO’s chief scientist, listens to an audience member during Wednesday’s meetings. Team members came from Langley, Goddard Space Flight Center, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA headquarters. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

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Specifically, CLARREO will measure spectrally resolved thermal infrared radiance and reflected solar radiation at absolute accuracy. Those measurements will open a window to better understand the warming forced by greenhouse gases and aerosols and, ideally, the warming caused by changes in snow cover, sea ice, land use and cloud properties. CLARREO will be the first to look at outgoing radiation in the far-infrared spectrum. The mission will also use Global Positioning System radio occultation to set benchmarks in order to detect long-term changes in the climate system. Finally, CLARREO will be designed to serve as a high-accuracy calibration tool for all operational sounding satellites.

CLARREO aims to set a precedent for accurate climate observations by more closely pinning its measurements to the International System of Units (SI) than any previous mission. That level of accuracy is called for in order to test the performance of large-scale climate models on a decadal time scale and to inform future policy decisions that will have, in the words of Steve Sandford, director of Langley’s Systems Engineering Directorate and CLARREO’s mission formulation manager, “trillion-dollar implications.”

“It’s on a scale we’ve never tried before,” Sandford said of CLARREO. “It takes us to the system level of the Earth for the first time.”


 
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