Air Planet People

Transcript

01:00:16 - 01:00:41

At the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The sky is our laboratory. We don't forecast the weather. We actually get inside the weather, to understand how it works. We gather data from surface based systems, such as radars, from aircraft systems, where we fly through weather phenomena, and from satellites where we observe the atmosphere from outer space. The atmosphere is truly a global commons.

01:00:41 - 01:01:16
It connects all of us. It's a very thin layer of air that envelops the earth. The atmosphere protects, nurtures and sustains life on the planet and it contains all of the weather. Calm, sunny days, rain, heat waves, severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, flood episodes, hail. storms. The atmosphere includes ozone, pollen, air pollution, rainbows. Our atmosphere is always changing. It's very dynamic, it's beautiful, and it's very important to study because it impacts all of our lives.

01:01:16 - 01:01:34
Most of us, when we think about climate, we think of the atmosphere locally and the local weather. But really the atmosphere is a fluid surrounding all of our planet. So here at NCAR we look at the atmosphere globally and try to understand the interaction of the various Earth systems. That includes the atmosphere, vegetation, ice components of the earth, the ocean and the sun.

01:01:34 - 01:01:54
The Earth system is so vast. We use a combination of satellites and computer models to help answer various questions that we have about the system. This involves how ice ages evolved. What's currently going on with climate and what impacts CO2 will have on the climate system going forward. Our understanding of climate change has really evolved through the years, and we now recognize it as more than a mere warming of the system.

01:01:54 - 01:02:04
There are changes in rainfall associated with the monsoons, the amount of tropical cyclones that we see every year, the severity of snowstorms worldwide. In addition to the frequency of droughts.

01:02:04 - 01:02:26
We know that changes to the landscape affect the atmosphere. For example, when we have large scale wildfires or volcanic eruptions or dust storms, that can actually put a lot of different chemical compounds and particles into the atmosphere that can impact air quality and climate. You walk through a pine forest and you smell that pine tree smell. Those are compounds that actually go into the atmosphere and are perfectly natural.

01:02:26 - 01:02:48
It's when they start mixing with the compounds that we emit from farms, cities, the tailpipes of our cars or our power plants. That's when you can get air quality problems, because they can mix in the presence of sunlight and form smog. It's really important as we have changes in our air quality, that we understand not only what's happened to the atmosphere, but what's going on to the biosphere as well.

01:02:49 - 01:03:11
NCAR manages two aircraft for NSF. These aircraft basically go all over the world collecting atmospheric measurements. The C130 can fly as close as 100ft above the ground. You can go really slow to make very specific measurements of aerosol particles, cloud droplets, chemicals in the air. Atmospheric gases. We're interested in studying the lower part of the atmosphere because that's the world that we live in.

01:03:12 - 01:03:37
We're basically studying cloud processes, wind, tornadoes, frontal systems and various other atmospheric phenomenon like that. We use the Gulf Stream V to go as high as 51,000ft. And it can go up and down, up and down collecting atmospheric measurements and do vertical profiles of these chemicals. We can actually measure pollution and how the pollution get transported around the world.

01:03:37 - 01:04:00
We know a lot about big weather events, such as winter storms and hurricanes that we can see coming sometimes out to a week out. But when it comes to smaller events like thunderstorms, tornadoes, hailstorms, windstorms, blizzards, forecasting those kinds of more local phenomena on a day to day basis, we still have a long way to go, and sometimes we only see them a few hours out in advance.

01:04:00 - 01:04:22
So a lot of bad weather still catches people by surprise. What we're doing to try to improve those forecasts is use computer models with very fine resolution that can actually represent thunderstorms, and are almost getting to the point of representing tornadoes right in the model. We take the observations of temperature, moisture and winds from the atmosphere. We put them into the model at district points.

01:04:22 - 01:04:41
Then we use the laws of physics to project those variables ahead. And what we see is actual storms developing from scratch where there was nothing 24 hours earlier. All of a sudden you get a big squall line developing. The research that we do helps to make forecast better all over the world.

01:04:41 - 01:05:06
One of the things we study that you can't see is wind. It flows through the mountains. It flows over the mountains, around the mountains. And it's a very difficult thing to forecast. We developed wind shear technologies early on in our work here at NCAR and those were deployed at airports around the United States. We've also developed technologies to help pilots and airlines avoid icing, turbulence, thunderstorms and other aviation hazards.

01:05:06 - 01:05:33
We're also working on technologies for the roadway system. We're going to be providing information to drivers about black ice, fog, high crosswinds and hail, and we're actually going to be using the vehicles themselves as sensors to help us collect the data across the whole roadway network, and then we'll merge it with traditional weather data to provide early warning information to the drivers while they're in the vehicle.

01:05:33 - 01:05:59
High winds can be very deadly. However, high winds have a big benefit wind energy. So we're developing technologies with the electrical utilities to help them predict where it's going to be windy and how much energy is going to be generated from the wind turbines. And then we'll use that to help them integrate wind more effectively across the nation, which is going to result in a much cleaner planet.

01:05:59 - 01:06:19
We depend on the sun for heat and light, but there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. The sun has an 11 year magnetic activity cycle, and what that basically means is that the sun's magnetic field is always getting churned and tangled and twisted. And every now and again, it gets so tangled and twisted that it just can't take any more stress.

01:06:19 - 01:06:38
It's almost like the sun burps. It just can't hold in the gas any longer, and it just explodes in the space. When that material travels towards Earth, if it just happens to be traveling in the right way. It connects with the Earth's magnetic field and hurdles down the poles and forms what we would call it the northern or the southern lights

01:06:38 - 01:07:04
In extreme cases, coronal mass ejections and flares dumped so much energy into the Earth's system. They can damage satellites. They can bring satellites down. They can damage our electrical grids and destroy the ability for us to use our cellular communications to understand the sun, the mass and energy, and how the light that bears the earth comes about. You need to actually build ways of observing the sun from the ground.

01:07:04 - 01:07:19
Here at NCAR we build computational models and instruments that we get flown on satellites and that we put on the top of mountains.

01:07:19 - 01:07:43
We have models of the entire Earth system that would include the ocean, the land surface, sea ice, and so forth. Within these models, grid boxes cover the surface of the Earth, and the vertical levels actually go from the bottom of the sea to the top of the atmosphere. Within each grid box, the calculations are performed that describe the physical and chemical properties of the system.

01:07:43 - 01:08:10
We might have millions of grid boxes covering, say, the atmospheric component of the Earth. All of these modeling activities require very large computing resources and very large storage systems in order to handle the data. We can have as many as 100,000 processors talking to each other, interconnected by a very high speed network. In many ways, it's analogous to the way that the neurons in your brain are connected together to form a system capable of thought.

01:08:10 - 01:08:16
It's an unimaginable amount of computing power.

01:08:16 - 01:08:17
In the social science area.

01:08:17 - 01:08:43
We're interested in how we can integrate the use of those climate models to better understand the connections between weather, climate, and health. For example, we know that weather and climate affect the life cycle of mosquitoes, how long they live, and how quickly a virus replicates. So we're looking at the potential for the mosquito that carries dengue fever to move its range to a higher elevation, potentially into Mexico City, and also to move further north in the United States in response to a changing climate.

01:08:43 - 01:08:45
The heat, it is relentless. It continues.

01:08:46 - 01:08:53
We're also working in the United States with forecasting extreme heat events, with looking at air pollution, air quality events and also pollen counts.

01:08:53 - 01:08:59
High temperatures of 108. Ozone alert Tuesday.

01:08:59 - 01:09:17
The atmosphere of our planet has no boundaries. So the science that we do has no boundaries either. It's all connected. It all moves around all of us. And so the science that we do spans the globe. In fact, our science even goes out into space. We do a lot of work on the Earth's sun connection. And so even where the atmosphere ends, our science continues.

01:09:18 - 01:09:37
We do science and communities around the world using local knowledge to address global issues, and collaborates with over 100 universities. So we have many people visiting us here. We have students, community groups, teachers, professional researchers, all of whom come to work with us here at NCAR and experience our science. And they take that new knowledge home with them to their communities and their classrooms and their labs.

01:09:37 - 01:09:56
Nearly 100,000 visitors come here to experience this thrill of hands on learning that we have in our exhibits. The founder of this lab, Walter Orr Roberts, said that it's a privilege to be able to do science. And in exchange for that privilege, it's our responsibility to engage and involve people in science for the benefit of everyone. It's incredibly important to bring younger generations of scientists here.

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They are our future.