NASA Completes This Year’s Flights in Search of Climate Change Clues

NASA’s Global Hawk research aircraft returned to its base at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., early Friday morning March 14, marking the completion of flights in support of this year’s Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), a multi-year NASA airborne science campaign.

On Feb. 13, the autonomously operated aircraft began conducting science flights from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam in the western Pacific region on a mission to track changes in the upper atmosphere and help researchers understand how these changes affect Earth’s climate.

“The western Pacific region is critical for establishing the humidity of the air entering the stratosphere,” said Eric Jensen, ATTREX principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

ATTREX measures the moisture levels and chemical composition of upper regions of the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere, a region where even small changes can significantly impact climate. Scientists will use the data to better understand physical processes occurring in this part of the atmosphere and help make more accurate climate predictions….

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Image Source: NASA