A
NASA satellite has taken its first look at our planet's atmosphere to
understand how tiny particles can affect Earth's global climate.
The
space agency’s Cloud-Aerosol
Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) opened its camera
eye over Eastern Asia, Indonesia and Australia to build this image of what
Earth’s atmosphere looks like to a laser ranging (lidar) instrument. [A
full-size version of this image can be seen here.]
While
NASA released this image on July 24, CALIPSO actually recorded the data on June
7.
The
orange and red colors signify regions of fine particles – known as aerosols –
that hang suspended above Earth’s surface in the planet’s atmosphere. The
green-yellow and blue hues are lidar reflections from air molecules.
Clouds
can be easily seen, since they show as bright pink and white signals. Some formations
appear dense enough to prevent CALIPSO’s lidar signal from penetrating through,
yielding black regions beneath the clouds.
A
cooperative effort between NASA and the French Space Agency (CNES), CALIPSO launched
on April 28, 2006 with its fellow cloud-watching satellite CloudSat. The two
satellites are part of a train
of Earth-watching spacecraft to monitor the planet’s atmosphere and water
cycle.
CALIPSO’s
primary goal is to track natural and human-caused aerosols to study how they
affect climate change, temperature variations and contribute to the greenhouse
effect and global warming, mission scientists have said.
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