ATom Postcard - Ascension Island to the Azores Islands

  • Released Thursday, March 16, 2017
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Atmospheric scientist Róisín Commane of Harvard University sent back a video postcard from Ascension Island and the Azores Islands, the seventh and eighth legs of the Atmospheric Tomography, or ATom mission. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean, the science team saw evidence of fires in Africa and dust from the Sahara.

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.

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, March 16, 2017.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:47 PM EDT.

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