TRUE DEMOCRACY SUMMER 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS
NASA's Ames Research Center
which conducts the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Project,
Exobiology (alien life forms) Division, and "Human Factors" (PSY-Warfare Division),
Sunnyvale, California.
Aug. 15, 2001
John Bluck
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Sunnyvale, California
Phone: 650/604-5026 or 650/604-9000
e-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov
NASA PAO on duty
NASA Newsroom, Jacksonville Naval Air Station, FL
Phone: 904/542-3846
E-mail: david.steitz@hq.nasa.gov
RELEASE: 01-59AR
NASA AMES COORDINATES HUGE HURRICANE OBSERVATION CAMPAIGN
Learning how to increase the warning time before Atlantic hurricanes make
landfall is a goal of some100 U.S. researchers from NASA and other agencies
who will a begin a 5-week campaign on Aug. 16.
Airborne researchers will fly above, around and through these weather monsters,
and also will use satellites, balloons, unpiloted aircraft and ground-based
instruments to gather hurricane data. Scientists from five NASA centers,
several government agencies and 10 universities are cooperating to study
tropical storms that erupt in the Atlantic Ocean.
"The Ames Earth Science Project Office is coordinating and managing the
overall project," said Steve Hipskind, project manager at NASA¹s Ames
Research Center in California¹s Silicon Valley. Called the Fourth Convection
And Moisture EXperiment (CAMEX-4), the scientific campaign begins Aug. 16
with a Œmedia day¹ for journalists at Jacksonville Naval Air Station,
FL. The project is scheduled to last until Sept. 24.
A major campaign goal is to produce more accurate hurricane predictions of
storm landfall to decrease the size of coastal evacuations and to increase
warning time. Researchers also are striving to reduce landfall track and intensity
forecast errors and improve precipitation forecasts to enable more accurate
inland flooding predictions.
"We will be making measurements in hurricanes with the NASA DC-8 and ER-2
aircraft out of Jacksonville Naval Air Station, FL," Hipskind said. "In addition,
we will be flying a low-altitude uninhabited aerial vehicle (drone airplane),
the Aerosonde. There will be ground instrumentation (several large weather
radar and balloon soundings), as well as a large theoretical and satellite
science team. Our collaborators include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and Air Force ŒHurricane Hunters,¹ both of which
provide operational aircraft reconnaissance in hurricanes, as well as the
NOAA Hurricane Research Division and the United States Weather Research Program."
The National Science Foundation is providing researchers from the National
Center for Atmospheric Research for the campaign.
Mike Craig of Ames is sharing project management responsibility with Hipskind.
Craig is doing much of the planning with Hipskind and taking the field lead
for the second half of the deployment. The large team of researchers will
select hurricanes and study them as they approach landfall in the Caribbean,
Gulf of Mexico and along the East Coast of the United States. Aircraft operations
will be within a 1,725-mile radius (2,760 km) of Jacksonville.
CAMEX-4 is focussed on the study of hurricane development, tracking, intensification
and landfall impacts using NASA-funded aircraft and surface remote instruments.
When possible, scientists will compare and validate measurements with coincident
observations from the QuikSCAT, Terra and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
satellites. This study will yield high spacial and temporal information of
hurricane structure, dynamics and motion. Scientists want to capture two
complete "snapshots" of a hurricane.
The resulting data -- when analyzed within the context of more traditional
aircraft, satellite and ground-based radar observations -- should provide
additional insight to hurricane modelers and forecasters who strive to improve
hurricane predictions.
NASA Ames is responsible for assuring the airworthiness and flight safety
of the remotely piloted Aerosonde aircraft, and the overall operational readiness
and collaborative agreements for all of the participating aircraft, according
to Hipskind. Each Aerosonde weighs about 30 pounds (less than 15 kg) and
will fly between 500 feet and 1,500 feet (150 m - 450 m) in the hurricane¹s
winds to gather data and send it back to researchers. Should one of the tiny
uninhabited aircraft be sucked up to higher altitudes, controllers would send
a signal to destroy it to avoid a collision with another aircraft.
"Ames also has participating scientists," Hipskind said. "Paul Bui is the
principal investigator for the meteorological measurement system for the
DC-8 aircraft, and Lenny Pfister is the co-investigator on both Paul's experiment,
as well as a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) laser hygrometer
on the DC-8." A hygrometer is an instrument that measures humidity in the
air.
Bui¹s experiment includes three major systems on the DC-8 airplane that
normally flies at a medium altitude between 20,000 ft. and 40,000 ft. ( 6,000
m - 12,000 m). The systems will measure air velocity to give scientists a
three-dimensional picture of wind directions. Bui also will provide extremely
accurate temperature measurements, critical to understanding details of hurricane
cloud formation.
While remote sensing of the hurricane environment is the primary objective
of CAMEX-4, separate flights will study thunderstorm structure, precipitation
systems and atmospheric water vapor profiles. The objective of these flights
is to improve precipitation estimates from microwave instruments, particularly
to validate NASA satellite measurements.
The NASA Earth Science Enterprise sponsors CAMEX-4. More CAMEX-4 information
is on the Internet at: http://http://www.hurricanes.nasa.gov
and
http://camex.msfc.nasa.gov
-end-
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Page Design by Jonas Dino
NASA Responsible Official: John Bluck
[Editor's note: Much of what NASA does is very beneficial to mankind,
however, I question why hurricanes are on the increase. I suspect that it
has something to do with global warming. When we get rid of global warming,
then I suspect that the amount and/or severity of hurricanes will decrease
causing less destruction of property and human life.
In terms of SETI, this is a destructive action by the Ames Research Center
and needs to be disbanded. Extraterrestrial life is peaceful, not warlike
as our elite and much of our military personnel are.]
For the simple reason that this research center is under the jurisdiction
of the War Department of the Shadow Government, we have to stop this. This
is just the same as committing atrocities to human beings on the earth. There
is no difference.
Extraterrestrial life is just as precious as human life on the earth. If
these employees can't understand that then they need to be reconditioned because
we can learn from other people who come from other planets if we treat them
with dignity and respect. Any planetary traveler who arrives on earth has
come a long, long way. We need to welcome them not abuse them. They have
intelligence far beyond ours.
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