A small satellite of the POT destined to measure for the first time in detail the heat loss to space through the poles from Earth took off on Saturday from New Zealand. Called PREFIRE, the mission should improve scientists’ forecasts related to climate change. “This new information, which we have never had in the past, will help us model what is happening at the poles and in the climate,” he said at a press conference in mid-May. Karen St. Germaindirector of Earth-related scientific research at NASA.
He satelite, the size of a shoe boxwas launched by an Electron rocket of the company Rocket Lab from Mahia, in the north of New Zealand. The same company will later launch a similar satellite. Both will be used to make far-infrared measurements over the Arctic and Antarctic, to directly quantify the heat released into space for the first time.
This phenomenon is “crucial because it helps balance the excess heat received from tropical regions and regulate the Earth’s temperature,” he explained. Tristan L’Ecuyerscientific director of the mission at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “The process that brings heat from the tropics to the poles is what is at the origin of our meteorology”he added.
Accurate data
Thanks to PREFIRE, NASA aims to understand how clouds, humidity or even the transformation of a frozen surface into liquid influence this heat loss. Until now, the models used by scientists to anticipate global warming are based, with respect to this parameter, only on theories and not on real observations, explained Tristan L’Ecuyer. “We hope to improve our ability to simulate sea level rise in the future, as well as the way in which climate change at the poles will affect the planet’s weather systems,” he explained.
This satellite joins more than twenty NASA missions in charge of observing the Earth, already in orbit. Small satellites, called Cubesats, represent a real opportunity to answer “very specific” questions and “at a lower cost,” explained Karen St. Germain. If more traditional large satellites can be considered “generalist”, these small devices are comparable to “specialist” ones, she stressed. “NASA needs you both.”
