[ off camera ] “Well everybody is familiar with rain. It literally falls in our backyard.
But much is still unknown about rain and the water cycle and
NASA is getting ready to launch a new satellite that’s going to help explain some of that.
Here to talk about this new satellite is Dr. Michelle Thaller from NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center. Thanks for joining us.” [ Thaller ] “Great to be here, thank you.”
[ off camera ] “So in a couple of hours NASA’s going to launch a new satellite that’s going to measure
rain and snowfall around the world. What’s so special about this satellite?”
[ Thaller ] “That’s right we’re getting ready to launch the core observatory of the Global
Precipitation Measurement mission. And this is actually a joint mission between NASA and
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA.
And this is actually the flagship of a constellation of nine different spacecraft.
All of these spacecraft are going to be orbiting together returning data and
measuring the entire precipitation content of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Every location we’re actually going to have a measurement for every three hours. So wherever
you are on the planet, one of these spacecraft and the whole thing working together will know how much
rain or snow is falling every three hours.”
[ off camera ] “Why do we need to measure precipitation from space?”
[ Thaller ] “Well you know in the United States we’re very used to having weather radar. You can actually sort of turn on the weather
broadcast and find out where rain is falling, where snow is falling. These are
ground-based radar systems. And we have pretty good coverage where we live, but
there are actually vast areas of the planet where we don’t have ground-based weather radar.
And so we need to come in from space to get an actual global view.
We see here in this visualization where precipitation is falling all over the
planet. And of course everything is connected. One area of the world influences
another. Where it’s dry in one place can influence where rain falls in another
place. So to get a view of the entire system you need to look globally.
And not only weather radar, but think about rain gauges to actually measure how much rain is falling.
If you took every rain gauge on the planet and put them all together,
they would only cover an area about the size of two basketball courts.
So there’s a huge area that we’re missing. We’re actually missing the story
of how precipitation works on a global level.”
[ off camera ] “How will GPM improve monitoring for hazards like hurricanes and floods?”
[ Thaller ] “Well you know, one of the things that GPM is going to be able to do
is use instruments that use radar to actually pierce through storms.
So as GPM flies over everyday, radar will be able to look
down and make maps of what’s going on inside storms themselves
see where the precipitation is most intense. This is a visualization
of Hurricane Katrina. You’ll notice there are these very high, red towers
inside there. And those are areas where the hurricane is very energetic.
There’s lots of precipitation falling. So we can see how storms change every
three hours and model how they’re going to evolve in the future,
what their paths may be. So GPM is giving us sort of this wonderful x-ray
system to see through storms and produce maps of how they change over time.
That research is going to be key to predicting better how they evolve,
where they’re going to go and how destructive they’re going to be.”
[ off camera ] “Why is it important to, uh, study rain and snowfall in a changing climate?”
[ Thaller ] “Well we definitely know very clearly that the Earth’s
atmosphere is getting warmer. And that’s going to have an effect on precipitation patterns
all over the planet. When something warms up it means you’re actually putting energy
in and that mean that there may be more extreme variations. There may be areas
that are dry now that will get dryer and wet that will get wetter. So
extreme events like floods for example, we’re going to be able to see over
time whether certain areas are more prone to flooding. Landslides,
we’re going to know exactly how much water is falling over areas of the planet that are prone to landslides.
So as climate change goes on, we’re going to see wet
areas of the planet getting wetter and dry areas possibly getting dryer.
We need to have an understanding of the entire global system of precipitation to be able to make
better predictions about what’s going to happen in the future.”
[ off camera ] “Tell us were can we learn more?” [Thaller] “Well if you’d like to learn more about GPM,
please go to our website NASA.GOV / GPM.
You can see animations of the spacecraft. You can learn more about what sort of data we’re going to be
returning and I encourage you also to look for us on social media.”
[ off camera ] “Dr. Michelle Thaller, thanks so much for joining us.” [Thaller] “Thank you.”