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People living in coastal communities or navigating dangerous waters will both benefit from data from the new Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite mission.
The satellite is scheduled to launch Saturday, November 21 at 12:17 p.m. EST (9:17 a.m. local time and 5:17 p.m. GMT) Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Calif., As part of a five-year quest to map the sea. increase associated with global warming. Sentinel-6 will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. You can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV.
The weather is 80% for the main launch opportunity on Saturday and a backup launch time on Sunday at 12:04 am EST (9:04 am local time and 5:04 pm GMT). NASA held two media briefings on Friday to discuss the impact of the new mission on current maps and models.
Related: NASA scientist receives new Earth observation satellite named after him
Sentinel-6 will not be depicted separately in the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) products, but it will enhance the models and maps that NOAA and other mission partners are already producing to better protect global populations against l intensification of hurricanes, officials said.
Sentinel-6 observations will be included in forecasts such as sea waves (convenient for shipping commodities across the ocean) and tropical storm forecasts, to quickly evacuate coastal populations if the need arises. feel.
Once Sentinel-6 has completed its one-year commissioning period, anyone in the world – including educators, students, and other members of the public – can download the raw data from the site. Web of the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
For researchers looking to improve their climate models, the work of Sentinel-6 will easily combine with other scientific missions. For example, altimetry collected from Sentinel-6 could be combined with Earth’s gravity measurements from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites.
This combination of measurements will show how much of the sea level rise is from melting ice caps and how much of the sea rise is from expanding oceans due to global warming of the oceans, Karen said. St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division, in a briefing focused on the scientific feedback from the mission.
Related: Melting ice caps will add 15 inches to global sea level rise by 2100
“Since 70% of the Earth’s surface is the ocean, the oceans play an important role in how the entire system [of global warming] “These global changes create both risks and opportunities for our human communities.
The benefits of Sentinel-6 data will flow to almost every industry affected by climate change, as 90% of the heat trapped by human-emitted greenhouse gases ends up in the ocean, said Josh Willis, scientist of the Sentinel-6 project at NASA. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in the science briefing.
“We’re watching the rate of sea level rise right in front of our eyes, and it’s satellites like this that allow us to do that,” Willis said. The rate of sea level rise is accelerating, making it crucial to add high-definition data from Sentinel-6 to existing satellite altimeters, he noted. The current sea level rise is almost 5 millimeters per year, more than double the annual rate of rise recorded in the 1990s.
To complicate the forecast, sea level rise is not keeping pace around the world. Large cities such as New York and Amsterdam are particularly prone to flooding waters among their populations, said Craig Donlon, Project Sentinel-6 scientist at the European Space Agency, in the same document. Worse, he added, for every centimeter of sea level rise, up to three million more people around the world are at risk of flooding.
“The Earth is warming up and the biggest indicator is sea level rise,” Donlon said. While space satellites have been monitoring this in detail for 30 years, the roots of this problem began in the Industrial Revolution, when nations began to burn huge carbon stores with coal, oil and other resources. natural resources to fuel their economies.
As scientists anxiously await the precise results of Sentinel-6, launch teams work to stay safe amid new pandemic protocols such as temperature controls at building entrances, physical distance between workers and post-travel quarantines.
“There are worse things than being trapped on the California coast,” joked Tim Dunn, launch director of NASA’s launch services program, at Friday’s press conference. Although the team cannot dine in restaurants as usual, they continue to do team-building activities such as outdoor patio meetings and joint exercises, also outdoors, has t -he declares.
Morale remains high within the group and Dunn says he is proud of any adaptations his colleagues make. “It’s good to get together with the team and know the importance of what we’re doing,” he said. “It energizes us and gives us the energy to keep moving forward.”
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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