NASA Joins Snow Study Over the Sea of Japan

	Artist concept of Aqua satellite

NASA and two Japanese government agencies are collaborating on a snowfall study over Wakasa Bay, Japan. Using NASA's Earth Observing System Aqua satellite, research aircraft and coastal radars to gather data, the joint effort is expanding scientific knowledge about where precipitation falls.

Until now, the north Pacific's contributions to the global hydrologic cycle have been difficult to quantify. Precipitation measurements by satellite over open water are very important, because there are very few other ways to obtain the data. Snowfall is particularly difficult to measure from space even over the relatively uniform background of the ocean.

The Wakasa Bay Field Campaign is a combined research effort among NASA, the National Space Agency of Japan (NASDA), and the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute (MRI). The campaign began January 3 and runs through February 14.

On board Aqua is a Japanese-built Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument. "With AMSR-E on Aqua, we're able to extend the high quality precipitation measurements from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite to beyond the tropics, in fact into both the mid-and high latitudes," said Claire Parkinson, Aqua Project Scientist at Goddard.

For more in the snow study, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0122japansnow.html