NASA has successfully launched a revolutionary climate change satellite from New Zealand, aiming to enhance climate prediction by measuring heat escaping from Earth’s poles for the first time.
“This new information — and we’ve never had it before — will improve our ability to model what’s happening in the poles, what’s happening in climate,” stated NASA’s earth sciences research director Karen St. Germain at a recent news conference.
The shoebox-sized satellite was launched by an Electron rocket, built by Rocket Lab, from Mahia in the north of New Zealand. The mission, known as PREFIRE, seeks to take infrared measurements above the Arctic and Antarctic to directly measure the heat released by the poles into space.
“This is critical because it actually helps to balance the excess heat that’s received in the tropical regions and really regulate the earth’s temperature,” explained Tristan L’Ecuyer, a mission researcher affiliated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “And the process of getting the heat from the tropical regions to the polar regions is actually what drives all of our weather around the planet.”
With PREFIRE, NASA aims to understand how factors such as clouds, humidity, or ice melting into water impact heat loss from the poles. Until now, climate change models relied on theories rather than direct observations of heat loss.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to improve our ability to simulate what sea level rise might look like in the future and also how the polar climate change is going to affect the weather systems around the planet,” added L’Ecuyer.
St. Germain noted that small satellites like this one offer a low-cost method to address specific scientific questions, complementing larger, more generalist satellites. “NASA needs both,” she emphasized.
