After nearly a decade of planning, this field campaign
happened to be here just as an unusually dry season
led to some of the most intense and large fires the region had
experienced in the last five years.
We came here to look at the transport of smoke and what smoke does
in the environment and particularly as it impacts clouds.
And we had an amazingly intense
smoke event that carried very high concentrations of smoke
into a place called the Sulu Sea.
You might be surprised to learn that fires affect cloud formation…
and NASA is studying that dynamic relationship.
NASA is a big and capable organization, but Earth science is a subject
far too big for one country, one agency
to tackle all by itself.
And when you can’t do it by yourself, you call up your colleagues halfway across the globe.
[music]
NASA EXPLORERS
EPISODE FOUR CHASING CLOUDS
FIRES
We’re in the Philippines to better understand how tiny particles
from smoke and pollution affect cloud formation.
The campaign is called the Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes
Philippines Experiment – CAMP2Ex.
The 2 is silent. That’s just a joke. But the acronym?
That’s serious. This project has implications for millions of people.
I’m the program scientist for CAMP2Ex
and while I’m here, I’m sort of the decision-maker
of last resort, if something comes up.
We caught up with Hal between meetings in the hanger. Along with Jeffrey Reid,
from the Naval Research Laboratory, he’s responsible for overseeing this large,
collaborative effort in real time -- making sure the team is
meeting their scientific goals, while also keeping researchers from institutions
around the U.S. and the Philippines working together smoothly.
A critical part of the process was the relationship built
built through time. That relationship enabled us to really work
together and think about
what would be the questions that would be relevant to us in the Philippines and in general
to the region. I’m Gemma Theresa Narisma
and I’m the executive director of the Manila Observatory.
The Manila Observatory, along with NASA, the Naval Research Laboratory
and a handful of university partners are using two research planes
and measurements from a ship to look at the properties of clouds
to improve satellite measurements in the region.
Satellites find it difficult to see quote-unquote this region
and regional climate models are having a hard time
capturing these processes.
That basically means planes, ships and teams on the ground need to fill in the missing details.
Which brings us back to the most intense fire season in five years.
We were able to get the P-3 into
that smoke and make
absolutely unique and important measurements.
It’s important because if we cannot get
the historical observations in our model, then we’re not so certain
whether our climate projections are correct.
When the planes aren’t flying, the science teams and flight crews
take turns visiting local schools, from elementary up through university.
Elementary school students can understand
remarkably complicated concepts, and so it’s kind of fun
to introduce them to things they may not
have known or thought about before and it’s remarkable how
quickly they pick up on it.
At these schools, the scientists are treated like rock stars.
We’ve had just an amazing response from the Philippines students
Many autographs and more selfies than I can count.
Some even said that they want to become
meteorologists themselves to help carry on the study of our home planet and how it’s changing.
I feel hopeful.
We’re not getting any younger and the number of atmospheric scientists
in the Philippines, in the world, but particularly in the Philippines, is quite small.
And the kind of work that needs to be done
to understand the different atmospheric processes in the region
is quite a lot.
We are so dependent on this Earth because we live here, we have to breathe here
and find things to eat here, it’s important
that we understand it, so that we don’t inadvertently
cause damage that would affect us all.
On the next episode of NASA Explorers
What we're seeing is that, areas that have been flammable are becoming more flammable,
pushing those systems into either extreme conditions
or a year-round fire season where fires are literally possible at any time.
Episode Five: The New Normal NASA