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NASA News
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration
Dryden Flight Research Center
P.O. Box 273
Edwards, California 93523
Phone   661-276-3449
FAX      661-276-3566
                                                                           
                                                        
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Chris Rink/Julia Cole
Langley Research Center
(Phone: 757/864-6786/4-4052)

Frederick A. Johnsen
Dryden Flight Research Center
(Phone: 661/276-2998)

May 29, 2003

RELEASE: 03-28

NASA AIRCRAFT FLIES SCIENCE MISSIONS OVER CALIFORNIA

(Note to Editors: NASA's DC-8 airborne science aircraft will make 
low-level flights over parts of Northern California near Trinidad and 
Eureka starting June 2. The DC-8, a former airliner, is a flying 
laboratory carrying scientific equipment that will collect 
atmospheric data along the coastline.)

Care to sample the sea salt, dust and other contaminants over 
California until mid-June?

These aerosols fill the air and provide an ideal environment for a 
new NASA field experiment starting May 28. As wind blows along the 
California coast, across dry deserts, and through urban areas, NASA 
scientists and their university partners will test the accuracy of 
instruments that measure aerosols -- particles in the atmosphere -- 
using NASA's DC-8 aircraft and ground stations.

NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., is leading the DC-8 
Inlet/Instrument Characterization Experiment -- or DICE -- based at 
NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.

"We plan to fly up the central valley of California and sample 
pollution. We'll also fly offshore of San Francisco and Los Angeles 
to sample sea salt and dust," said Bruce Anderson, the atmospheric 
scientist from Langley that is leading the experiment. "For DICE, we 
needed a range of aerosol types, and they are available along the 
West Coast."

Every day natural and industrial processes produce aerosols, 
including pollution in the lower atmosphere, that significantly alter 
the global climate. Depending on their size, chemical composition and 
altitude, aerosols either warm the Earth by absorbing energy or cool 
the planet by reflecting sunlight. Knowing how they affect the amount 
of energy in the Earth's system is one of the largest uncertainties 
in determining how climate will change in the future.

Scientists from Langley, the University of Hawaii, the University of 
New Hampshire and the Georgia Institute of Technology are 
contributing instruments to the DC-8 payload for the DICE campaign. 
They will compare aircraft instrument measurements and observations 
from aerosol-monitoring ground stations located in California, 
including ones at Dryden, Rogers Dry Lake and Trinidad Head.

DICE will enable the scientists to better understand data from past 
field experiments and prepare for activities in NASA's 
Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment-North America or 
INTEX-NA. Scheduled for summer 2004, INTEX-NA will study the exchange 
of chemicals and aerosols between the land and lower atmosphere over 
the U.S. East Coast.

"For INTEX-NA, we'll look at the quantity of pollution over North 
America and how that pollution is transported across the Atlantic 
Ocean to Europe," Anderson said.

INTEX-NA will be the latest in a series of NASA field campaigns to 
better understand the worldwide chemistry of the troposphere or the 
lower atmosphere. Over the past 20 years, NASA has conducted missions 
in the Amazon, the Arctic, the tropical Atlantic and the Pacific to 
study both natural and human-made processes that determine the 
troposphere's chemical makeup.

The second phase of INTEX-NA is scheduled for spring 2006. This 
international research effort is part of NASA's Earth Science 
Enterprise, dedicated to understanding and protecting our home
planet.

- NASA -

For additional information about the DC-8:

www.dfrc.nasa.gov/research.

Photos of NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory are availableon the NASA 
Dryden web site photo gallery at 
www.dfrc.nasa.gov/galleery/photo/DC-8/index.html.

For photo prints or video dubs, contact Beth Hagenauer at the NASA 
Dryden public affairs office, (661) 276-7960.

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