The team from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center will launch an airborne mission to measure the greenhouse gasses over the Mid-Atlantic region in May. The mission will gather accurate data about carbon emissions and its flux.
The airborne mission is called Carbon Airborne Flux Experiment, or CARAFE, according to the official announcement from NASA. The mission will gather the data to understand the carbon flux, or the carbon exchange process. The data will be used to improve the model to predict the Earth method to sink carbon from the carbon emissions, also to locate the natural and artificial areas that absorb carbon dioxide or methane.
With the current state of data, scientists are able to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide produced annually from the burning of fossil fuels. The current data also shows that 44 percent of the carbon emissions stay in the atmosphere, while the 54 percent of the carbon are taken by the ocean and land sinks. However, the scientists are not able to comprehend the biological process mechanism of the carbon absorption in grasses, crops, and trees.
Scientists expect the CARAFE will be able to measure carbon emissions and its flux more accurately. The scientists are led by Randy Kawa, an expert in carbon modeling from Goddard as the principal investigator of CARAFE. He will be accompanied by Paul Newman, as co-principal investigator.
“We want to build a confident and consistent picture of both carbon dioxide and methane fluxes," Kawa said. "This will allow decision makers to make better-informed decisions about greenhouse gas policy and impacts.”
The measurement will take a month of investigation of the carbon emissions and its flux using the NASA C-23 Sherpa aircraft, from the Wallops Flight Facility in Maryland. The aircraft will fly at various altitude over the Mid-Atlantic, covering forest in eastern Maryland, agricultural area in eastern Virginia and southern Delaware, New Jersey Pine Barren, and swap in the east North Carolina and southeastern Virginia,
As for now, scientists need more data to measure the climate changes more accurately, as reported by Los Angeles Times. As there are many variables that play important role in the carbon emission and greenhouse gasses. Watch the NASA explanation about the climate change that makes the carbon emissions process of the Earth becoming off-balance below:
