2002 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| LEARNING HOW TO EXPLAIN THE RAIN (N-POL) | G02-083 | 11/12/02 | 00:13:37 | Precipitation is more complicated than water falling from the sky. Rain, snow, ice crystals, clouds, and more all contribute to a complex process that circulates energy in the atmosphere and helps regulate our planet's climate. Recent efforts by NASA and its partners have begun to reveal some of the subtleties that drive various forms of precipitation around the world. But more research is needed. Now with a new type of Earth based radar being utilized in actual field research tests, the space agency is developing the technologies that will enable it to maximize research systems of the future, already on the drawing board.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Echos of Falling Water (Reporter's Package) - What we don't know about rain far outweighs what we do know. That's one of the reasons NASA has developed the advanced N-Pol radar system. The facility is the only one of its kind, utilizing an ultra-modern flat panel radar antenna. It's affiliated with the TRMM project, a satellite based research mission that's designed to study rainfall in revolutionary ways.
SOT: John Gerlach 5:09--05:40 to understand what the satellite tells you you have to have some way of tying that into the measurements on the ground, and that's one of the functions of the radar.
Located on the shores of a sun-baked backwater in the Florida Keys, a research team from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility put the new radar system through its paces. The system is portable and self contained Šable to operate continuously without re-supply for nearly two weeks.
Working in shifts 24 hours a day, scientists and engineers monitored tropical rainfall in a roughly 250 mile radius. They measured not only where and when rain fell, but also vital details about its physical nature, like droplet size and concentration of atmospheric water in a given area.
The team will fold their findings into ongoing research about precipitation and global climate. Moreover, their experiments here on a lonely spit of land are fundamental to the development of the next generation precipitation monitoring system, currently being developed for worldwide deployment in the latter part of the decade.
Credit: NASA
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| ITEM (2): NASA's New Portable Radar Facility - NASA's Polarimetric Radar. Capable of being loaded entirely into four ordinary sea cargo shipping containers, this new, advanced radar facility can be transported just about anywhere in the world with relative ease. Engineers and scientists designed the system to make measurements about distinct aspects of precipitation as it falls through the atmosphere. Characteristics of interest include droplet size, quantity, duration of rainfall events, and more. The rotating radar dish sees roughly 250 miles in any direction, rotating at a variable rate and able to be tilted dynamically to facilitate a multi-layered view of the atmosphere.
Credit: NASA
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| ITEM (3): Cloudy Skies in a Whole New Light - Radar data collected by researchers at the facility can be displayed in ways that use colors to designate specific characteristics. As it sweeps the sky in a circular pattern, the radar antenna feeds its information into a sophisticated computer program. The software essentially maps the sky in terms of precipitation, showing a variety of details, from drop size to how much water exists at any one time in a given volume of sky. In addition to its ability to color-code rainfall data, the system can also store spatial information about what it sees, enabling researchers to review and compare their data at a later time.
Credit: NASA
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| ITEM (4): A More Tangible Measurement of Rain - Here we see a pair of rain gauges. They're mounted to a flat surface in a remote area of a mangrove swamp in the Florida Keys. At the base of the tube, a protected electrical port stays out of the rain, ready to be plugged into a laptop computer. Like their analogous gauges scattered elsewhere, these instruments can collect rainfall in a central container and store it until technicians can come by to take readings.
Credit: NASA
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| ITEM (5): TRMM: Watching Rain From the Other Side of the Clouds - The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is the first Earth Science mission dedicated to studying tropical and subtropical rainfall, precipitation that falls within 35 degrees north and 35 degrees south of the equator. Flying at a low orbital altitude of 217 miles (350 kilometers), TRMM's study of tropical rainfall and attendant processes continues to be a powerful scientific research tool. In fact, during the past five years, this Japanese and American joint effort has provided huge returns to the science community, from greater understanding of how tropical rainfall affects overall climate, to the energy budget surrounding global desert regions, to revolutionary ways for studying hurricanes.
Credit: NASA
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| ITEM (6): Selected Soundbites With John Gerlach
Branch Head, NASA Observational Sciences Branch
Credit: NASA
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