A small NASA satellite was launched on Saturday from New Zealand, tasked with enhancing climate change predictions by measuring heat escaping from Earth's poles for the first time.
"This new information and we've never had it before. It will improve our ability to model what's happening in the poles, what's happening in climate," NASA's Earth sciences research director Karen St. Germain announced at a recent news conference.
The satellite, comparable in size to a shoebox, was deployed by an Electron rocket, developed by Rocket Lab. The launch occurred from Mahia, located in northern New Zealand, as part of the PREFIRE mission.
Rocket Lab plans to launch another similar satellite. These satellites will capture infrared measurements above the Arctic and Antarctic to directly measure the heat released from 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 from 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," he added.
The PREFIRE mission aims to investigate how clouds, humidity, or the melting of ice into water impacts heat loss from the poles. Until now, climate change models estimating heat loss were based on theoretical data rather than direct observations, noted L'Ecuyer.
"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," he added.
St. Germain emphasized that small satellites like this one provide a cost-effective way to address specific scientific inquiries. She described larger satellites as "generalists" and smaller ones as "specialists."