by Samson Reiny / ANGELES CITY, PAMPANGA, PHILIPPINES / Until now, no one had captured smoke plumes from a Borneo fire in all their chemical, radiative, and physical glory… My work partner in crime, Katy Mersmann, and I left Washington, D.C., Saturday morning and arrived at our hotel near Clark Air Base in Angeles City, …
by Brenna Biggs / SKIES OVER CALIFORNIA / The world is full of diet and exercise plans. Eat less carbs, eat more carbs, practice yoga, go for a run. In my opinion, the most consistent way to burn calories is by working for the Whole Air Sampling (WAS) group in the Rowland-Blake lab. Fortunately, as …
by Maria-Jose Viñas / NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, CANADA "Oh, and here's a black spruce!" exclaimed Charlotte Weinstein, an assistant research scientist at Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI), while pointing at a delicate sapling barely the height of a thumb that was almost hidden among the tall grass. Weinstein and her colleague Shannon Rose, a research fellow …
by Joe Atkinson / SALINA, KANSAS / Time for a change of scenery. After nearly a month flying missions out of Boise, Idaho, to sample smoke from big wildfires in the western U.S., the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality, or FIREX-AQ, is pulling up stakes and moving to America's heartland …
A six-hour flight makes for a long day, but I'm so glad to learn more about NASA's Earth science missions and how even the seemingly simplest things — such as clouds and climate — can have intricacies and complexities that people devote their whole lives to studying. by Andrea Lloyd / NASA'S WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ From Alberta, Canada, to Michigan, USA. That's how far the plumes of smoke traveled in a few short days, from July 21 to July 24. Smoke from wildfires has staying power. Laura Thapa, a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles and member of the FIREX-AQ forecasting …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Each morning Amber Soja gets up at 5:00 a.m. to check the fire weather. She's an associate scientist from the National Institute of Aerospace based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, one of the lead forecasters for FIREX-AQ with one of the most important jobs: distilling the information …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ The FIREX-AQ campaign is flying out of Boise, Idaho. The choice of location was no accident. Boise is also home to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), the nerve center of all major firefighting operations for the United States. Earlier this week, we took a tour. "NIFC is not …
By Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Thursday, July 25 "It's nice to have a flight plan to deviate from," said DC-8 pilot Tim Vest at the debrief on Thursday night. It was just after 10 p.m. and the DC-8 had just returned from a 6-hour flight over a fire they weren't planning on visiting. The …
