ATom Postcard - Alaska and the Arctic

  • Released Thursday, February 9, 2017
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On its second worldwide tour, the Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) team starts by surveying the north’s polar regions during winter, which is marked by a build-up of pollution from the United States, Canada, northern China, and Russia. In the spring, sunlight spurs chemical reactions that remove those pollutants and greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Music credit: Ice Lands by Rik Carter [PRS]

Complete transcript available.

The ATom mission aboard NASA’s DC-8 aircraft and flying laboratory is sampling world-wide in one of the most extensive surveys of the atmosphere to date, measuring over 200 gases as well as airborne particles. The science team is particularly interested in methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon particles, which have strong effects on climate and which all have both human and natural origins.

Credits

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 9, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

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