Never at rest: the air over Los Angeles
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- Visualizations by:
- Trent L. Schindler
- View full credits
The Megacities Carbon Project is developing and testing methods for monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions of cities, the largest human contributors to climate change. Observations of the concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and other gases in the atmosphere can be used to estimate the locations and strengths of different emission sources. Interpreting measurements of gas concentrations at one location to infer an emission source at another location is complicated by the effects of the Earth's atmosphere which is always in motion. For example, increasing concentrations of CO2 at a given location can either be due to increasing emissions or stagnant or sinking air whereas decreasing concentrations of CO2 can either be due to decreasing emissions or strong winds or rising air.
This visualization shows the output of a high-resolution model of the atmosphere over Los Angeles (courtesy Meemong Lee and Zhijin Li, NASA/JPL). The model is based on meteorological measurements for one month in the spring of 2010 at a resolution of 1 km and 3 hours. Vertical motion of the Earth's Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) - the lowest part of the atmosphere that hugs the surface of the Earth - is represented by the gray "blanket". The height of the PBL is largely driven by convection associated with the changing surface temperature of the Earth (for example, rising during the day and sinking at night). The colored arrows represent the strength and direction of winds at different altitudes. The Megacities Carbon Project includes measurements and models of PBL dynamics and winds to help interpret measurements of greenhouse gas abundances at different locations around the basin. Measurement systems include wind speed and direction indicators and laser detection and ranging (lidar) instruments to track the changing PBL height.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
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Animators
- Trent L. Schindler (USRA) [Lead]
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
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Scientist
- Riley Duren (NASA/JPL CalTech)
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Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
Datasets used in this visualization
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Megacities Project PBL (Megacities Project Planetary Boundary Layer Height Data)
ID: 952Calibrated instrument data and retrieved mixing layer heights from the MiniMicroPulse Lidar (MiniMPL) and Ceilometer at Caltech.
This dataset can be found at: https://megacities.jpl.nasa.gov/portal/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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ID: 20198 Animation
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ID: 20199 Animation
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Read moreThe Megacities Carbon Project is developing and testing methods for monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions of cities, the largest human contributors to climate change. One of the sites in the Megacities monitoring network for Los Angeles is the California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (CLARS) located on Mt Wilson. From an altitude of nearly 6000 ft, CLARS makes frequent scans during daylight hours across the LA basin. In this animation, the CLARS telescope mirror points sequentially to different pre-programmed points to sample sunlight scattering off the Earth's surface. The CLARS spectrometer splits the light from each reflection point into a spectrum (like colors in a rainbow) to reveal the unique "fingerprints" of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases in the atmosphere. The lines in the spectrum are due to absorption from the various gases - analysis of which is used to reveal the concentration of a given gas in a column of air for a given location. CLARS serves as a prototype for a future geostationary satellite instrument that may someday serve as a "carbon weather satellite" - providing frequent wall-to-wall mapping of greenhouse gases across entire cities and broader regions.CLARS was developed by JPL with support from the NASA Earth Science Technology Office. CLARS operations are funded jointly by NASA and NIST. ||
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ID: 20197 Animation
Megacities Carbon Project - Los Angeles observing network
Read moreThe Megacities Carbon Project is developing and testing methods for monitoring the greenhouse gas emissions of cities, the largest human contributors to climate change. Pilot activities have begun in the megacities of Los Angeles and Paris that build on existing research infrastructure there and collaboration with efforts in smaller cities.This animation shows a perspective view of the Los Angeles basin looking north. Yellow columns represent continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon from commercial gas analyzers on radio towers and roof-tops. The California Laboratory for Atmospheric Remote Sensing (CLARS) on Mt Wilson uses reflected sunlight to track carbon across the basin.Aircraft periodically sample the air coming in and out of the megacity domain. Satellites such as NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 will sample the "urban domes" of carbon dioxide of Los Angeles and other megacities around the world.The Los Angeles component of the project is jointly funded by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS), and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Implementing project partners for LA include: JPL, California Institute of Technology, Arizona State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, CARB, Earth Networks, NASA Ames Research Center, and Sigma Space. ||
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