On The Trail Of Greenhouse Gases

(CBS)  The nation's most advanced research plane has begun a 24,000-mile, pole-to-pole trip and the scientists aboard hope to capture the first-ever global picture of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere.

The goal of the mission is ambitious -- the first-ever real-time sampling of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses across a wide range of altitudes in the atmosphere, literally from pole-to-pole.

Much of what we know about greenhouse gases has been acquired from distant satellites, balloon launches, or highly sophisticated supercomputer models. The research plane's mission will, for the first time, give scientists real-time global observation data to correlate with those climate models.

"The things that excite me about this project -- it's the first time we've been able to look in great detail at the whole globe all at once," said Steven Wofsy, professor of atmospheric and environmental science at Harvard University. "Nobody has ever done that. Satellites see the whole globe, but they don't see it in great detail.

"This aircraft has the capability, and this team has the capability to do that in a way that's never been done before," Wofsy continued, in a video posted on the NSF Web site. "When we finish up, we'll have a completely new picture about how greenhouse gases are entering the atmosphere and being removed from the atmosphere both by natural processes and by humans."

The plane is called HIAPER (pronounced hyper), short for the National Science Foundation's High Performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research. A modified Gulfstream V jet, it can fly at high altitudes for extended periods of time and can carry 5,600 pounds of sensing equipment, making it a premier aircraft for scientific discovery.

HIAPER began its historic voyage Wednesday, Jan. 7, commencing a three week mission to sample the atmosphere in some of the most inaccessible regions of the world.

This is the first in a series of five, three-week flights to be manned by an international team of scientists.

The project is a joint effort led by Harvard University, the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

[rf35]

I got some greenhouse gasses for ya!

Rather than worry about how much the plane and its missions cost, those who buy into anthropogenic GW should worry about how much extra CO2 the jet puts out. Every time I see the phrase %u201Cinternational team of scientists,%u201D I get flashbacks from the IPCC.

Hopefully this will help expose the whole man-made global warming line as a load of BS, but I doubt the "international team" will never let that happen. On the unlikely chance that it is not, then the data can either validate climate models or allow climatologists to craft more accurate ones.

[ubrew12]

ubrew12 said: "How much did their ignorance cost the U.S. taxpayer? "

Researchers in China and Russia just jointly determined that the oceans, saturated with CO2, are absorbing significantly less CO2 from the atmosphere. This could spell REAL trouble with human attempts to counter global warming in the future, since the oceans have been the major helpful factor in countering it so far.

But, you know, you''re right, DebinOK1! Whats important is how much it cost to find out just how scr*wed we are. What a waste of taxpayer dollars!

[ubrew12]

DebinOK1 said: "Just how much is this costing the U.S. taxpayer? "

Missing the good ol'' laissez faire, invisible hand days of the Bush administration? When NOT finding out was seen as a sign of intelligence?

How much did their ignorance cost the U.S. taxpayer?

[debinok1]

Just how much is this costing the U.S. taxpayer?