Atmospheric composition changes affect air quality, weather, climate, and critical constituents such as ozone. Atmospheric exchange links terrestrial and oceanic pools within the carbon cycle and other biogeochemical cycles. Solar radiation affects atmospheric chemistry and is thus a critical factor in atmospheric composition. Atmospheric composition is central to Earth system dynamics, since the atmosphere integrates surface emissions globally on time scales from weeks to years and couples several environmental issues.
Objectives of NASA’s Atmospheric Composition Focus Area include monitoring and assessing the coupled effects of changes in ozone depleting substance emissions and climate variations on ozone recovery and future atmospheric composition; enabling more accurate climate forecasts based on improved understanding of the forcings of global environmental change; and developing and refining better air quality forecasts that take into account the feedbacks between regional air quality and global climate variations. Achievements in these areas via advances in observations, data assimilation, and modeling enable improved descriptions and predictions of how changes in atmospheric composition affect ozone, climate, and air quality.
An integrated observational strategy involving global observations from space augmented by suborbital and ground-based measurements is key to NASA’s scientific approach to analyzing and predicting atmospheric composition. This integrated observational strategy is furthered via studies of atmospheric processes using unique suborbital platform-sensor combinations to investigate, for example: (1) the processes responsible for the emission, uptake, transport, and chemical transformation of ozone and precursor molecules associated with its production in the troposphere and its destruction in the stratosphere and (2) the formation, properties, and transport of aerosols in the Earth’s troposphere and stratosphere, as well as aerosol interaction with clouds. NASA’s research strategy for atmospheric composition encompasses an end-to-end approach for instrument design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and prognostic studies.
The Atmospheric Composition research programs are soliciting proposals for data analysis and modeling of NASA supported airborne campaign data. NASA’s Earth Science Division has supported a number of airborne campaigns in Atmospheric Composition during the last few years.
Proposal Due Date: Sep. 18, 2020
The modeling and analysis effort addresses the following research issues:
Studies of long-term trends in atmospheric composition (potentially using both current and past mission data sets) are also of interest to the program, where the connection between cause and effect is elucidated using models. The program is interested in studies that integrate observations from multiple instruments with models to address attribution and predictions.
