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NASA Launches New Era of Earth Science from Space Station

September 8, 2014 in Climate Change, Environment, EV News, Greentech, Pollution, Wind

Image courtesy of NASA

Image courtesy of NASA

The launch of a NASA ocean winds sensor to the International Space Station (ISS) this month inaugurates a new era of Earth observation that will leverage the space station’s unique vantage point in space. Before the end of the decade, six NASA Earth science instruments will be mounted to the station to help scientists study our changing planet.

The first NASA Earth-observing instrument to be mounted on the exterior of the space station will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on the next SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services flight, currently targeted for no earlier than Sept. 19. ISS-RapidScat will monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane monitoring from the space station.

The second instrument is the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a laser instrument that will measure clouds and the location and distribution of airborne particles such as pollution, mineral dust, smoke, and other particulates in the atmosphere. CATS will follow ISS-RapidScat on the fifth SpaceX space station resupply flight, targeted for December.

“We’re seeing the space station come into its own as an Earth-observing platform,” said Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the International Space Station Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “It has a different orbit than other Earth remote sensing platforms. It’s closer to Earth, and it sees Earth at different times of day with a different schedule. That offers opportunities that complement other Earth-sensing instruments in orbit today.”

The space station-based instruments join a fleet of 17 NASA Earth-observing missions currently providing data on the dynamic and complex Earth system. ISS-RapidScat and CATS follow the February launch of the Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory, a joint mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the July launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, making 2014 one of the busiest periods for new NASA Earth science missions in more than a decade.

Most of the agency’s free-flying, Earth-observing satellites orbit the planet over the poles at altitudes higher than 400 miles in order to gather data from all parts of the planet. Although the space station does not pass over Earth’s polar regions, its 240-mile high orbit does offer logistical and scientific advantages.

“With the space station we don’t have to build a spacecraft to gather new data — it’s already there,” said Stephen Volz, associate director of flight programs in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The orbit enables rare, cross-disciplinary observations when the station flies under another sensor on a satellite. Designing instruments for the space station also gives us a chance to do high-risk, high-return instruments in a relatively economical way.”

The data provided by ISS-RapidScat will support weather and marine forecasting, including tracking storms and hurricanes. The station’s orbit will allow the instrument to make repeated, regular observations over the same locations at different times of day, providing the first near-global measurements of how winds change throughout the day. ISS-RapidScat was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

CATS is a laser remote-sensing instrument, or lidar, that measures clouds and tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere. These atmospheric components play a critical part in understanding how human activities such as pollution and fossil fuel burning contribute to climate change. CATS was built by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Two additional NASA Earth science instruments are scheduled to launch to the station in 2016. The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III), will measure aerosols, ozone, water vapor and other gases in the upper atmosphere to help scientists assess how the ozone layer is recovering and better understand global climate change. SAGE III was developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and built by Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colorado.

The Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) will detect and locate lightning over tropical and mid-latitude regions of the globe. The first LIS was launched in 1997 as part of NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. The sensor will monitor lightning for Earth science studies and provide cross-sensor calibration and validation with other space-borne instruments and ground-based lightning networks. LIS was developed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

In July, NASA selected proposals for two new instruments that will observe changes in global vegetation from the space station, giving scientists new ways to observe how forests and ecosystems are affected by changes in climate and land use change. Both sensors will be completed before the end of the decade.

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) will use a laser-based system to study forest canopy structure in a range of ecosystems, from the tropics to the high northern latitudes. The observations will help scientists better understand the changes in carbon storage within forests from both human activities and natural climate variations. GEDI is managed by scientists at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) is a high-resolution multiple wavelength thermal imaging spectrometer that will study water use and water stress in vegetation. Measurements of the loss of water from growing leaves and evaporation from the soil will help reveal how ecosystems change with climate and provide a critical link between the water cycle and plant health in both natural and agricultural ecosystems. ECOSTRESS is managed by JPL.

The space station provides several capabilities useful to both instruments. The space station orbit provides more observation time of forests and vegetation over temperate land masses than possible with the polar orbit commonly used for other types of Earth observations. The GEDI laser requires significant power resources, which the space station can provide.

For more information on Earth science activities aboard the space station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/issearthscience.

NASA monitors Earth’s vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities in 2014, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow.

This article is a repost, credit: NASA.

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Study: Cutting emissions pays for itself

August 24, 2014 in Climate Change, Environment, EV News, Politics, Pollution

Savings from healthier air can make up for some or all of the cost of carbon-reduction policies.

Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT Courtesy of MIT

Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT
Courtesy of MIT

By Audrey Resutek, MIT

Lower rates of asthma and other health problems are frequently cited as benefits of policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions from sources like power plants and vehicles, because these policies also lead to reductions in other harmful types of air pollution.

But just how large are the health benefits of cleaner air in comparison to the costs of reducing carbon emissions? MIT researchers looked at three policies achieving the same reductions in the United States, and found that the savings on health care spending and other costs related to illness can be big — in some cases, more than 10 times the cost of policy implementation.

“Carbon-reduction policies significantly improve air quality,” says Noelle Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry at MIT, and co-author of a study published today in Nature Climate Change. “In fact, policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions improve air quality by a similar amount as policies specifically targeting air pollution.”

Selin and colleagues compared the health benefits to the economic costs of three climate policies: a clean-energy standard, a transportation policy, and a cap-and-trade program. The three were designed to resemble proposed U.S. climate policies, with the clean-energy standard requiring emissions reductions from power plants similar to those proposed in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.

Health savings constant across policies

The researchers found that savings from avoided health problems could recoup 26 percent of the cost to implement a transportation policy, but up to to 10.5 times the cost of implementing a cap-and-trade program. The difference depended largely on the costs of the policies, as the savings — in the form of avoided medical care and saved sick days — remained roughly constant: Policies aimed at specific sources of air pollution, such as power plants and vehicles, did not lead to substantially larger benefits than cheaper policies, such as a cap-and-trade approach.

Savings from health benefits dwarf the estimated $14 billion cost of a cap-and-trade program. At the other end of the spectrum, a transportation policy with rigid fuel-economy requirements is the most expensive policy, costing more than $1 trillion in 2006 dollars, with health benefits recouping only a quarter of those costs. The price tag of a clean energy standard fell between the costs of the two other policies, with associated health benefits just edging out costs, at $247 billion versus $208 billion.

“If cost-benefit analyses of climate policies don’t include the significant health benefits from healthier air, they dramatically underestimate the benefits of these policies,” says lead author Tammy Thompson, now at Colorado State University, who conducted the research as a postdoc in Selin’s group.

Most detailed assessment to date

The study is the most detailed assessment to date of the interwoven effects of climate policy on the economy, air pollution, and the cost of health problems related to air pollution. The MIT group paid especially close attention to how changes in emissions caused by policy translate into improvements in local and regional air quality, using comprehensive models of both the economy and the atmosphere.

In addition to carbon dioxide, burning fossil fuels releases a host of other chemicals into the atmosphere. Some of these substances interact to form ground-level ozone, as well as fine particulate matter. The researchers modeled where and when these chemical reactions occurred, and where the resulting pollutants ended up — in cities where many people would come into contact with them, or in less populated areas.

The researchers projected the health effects of ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter, two of the biggest health offenders related to fossil-fuel emissions. Both pollutants can cause asthma attacks and heart and lung disease, and can lead to premature death.

In 2011, 231 counties in the U.S. exceeded the EPA’s regulatory standards for ozone, the main component of smog. Standards for fine particulate matter — airborne particles small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs and even absorbed into the bloodstream — were exceeded in 118 counties.

While cutting carbon dioxide from current levels in the U.S. will result in savings from better air quality, pollution-related benefits decline as carbon policies become more stringent. Selin cautions that after a certain point, most of the health benefits have already been reaped, and additional emissions reductions won’t translate into greater improvements.

“While air-pollution benefits can help motivate carbon policies today, these carbon policies are just the first step,” Selin says. “To manage climate change, we’ll have to make carbon cuts that go beyond the initial reductions that lead to the largest air-pollution benefits.”

The study shows that climate policies can also have significant local benefits not related to their impact on climate, says Gregory Nemet, a professor of public affairs and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who was not involved in the study.

“A particularly notable aspect of this study is that even though several recent studies have shown large co-benefits, this study finds large co-benefits in the U.S., where air quality is assumed to be high relative to other countries,” Nemet says. “Now that states are on the hook to come up with plans to meet federal emissions targets by 2016, you can bet they will take a close look at these results.”

This research was supported by funding from the EPA’s Science to Achieve Results program.

This article is a repost, credit: MIT.

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Recycling old batteries into solar cells

August 17, 2014 in Environment, EV News, Greentech, Pollution, Solar

Proposal could divert a dangerous waste stream while producing low-cost photovoltaics.

"The lead from a single car battery could produce enough solar panels to provide power for 30 households." - David L. Chandler, MIT Illustration: Christine Daniloff / MIT Courtesy of MIT

“The lead from a single car battery could produce enough solar panels to provide power for 30 households.” –
David L. Chandler, MIT
Illustration: Christine Daniloff / MIT
Courtesy of MIT

By David L. Chandler, MIT 

This could be a classic win-win solution: A system proposed by researchers at MIT recycles materials from discarded car batteries — a potential source of lead pollution — into new, long-lasting solar panels that provide emissions-free power.

The system is described in a paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, co-authored by professors Angela M. Belcher and Paula T. Hammond, graduate student Po-Yen Chen, and three others. It is based on a recent development in solar cells that makes use of a compound called perovskite — specifically, organolead halide perovskite — a technology that has rapidly progressed from initial experiments to a point where its efficiency is nearly competitive with that of other types of solar cells.

“It went from initial demonstrations to good efficiency in less than two years,” says Belcher, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy at MIT. Already, perovskite-based photovoltaic cells have achieved power-conversion efficiency of more than 19 percent, which is close to that of many commercial silicon-based solar cells.

Initial descriptions of the perovskite technology identified its use of lead, whose production from raw ores can produce toxic residues, as a drawback. But by using recycled lead from old car batteries, the manufacturing process can instead be used to divert toxic material from landfills and reuse it in photovoltaic panels that could go on producing power for decades.

Amazingly, because the perovskite photovoltaic material takes the form of a thin film just half a micrometer thick, the team’s analysis shows that the lead from a single car battery could produce enough solar panels to provide power for 30 households.

As an added advantage, the production of perovskite solar cells is a relatively simple and benign process. “It has the advantage of being a low-temperature process, and the number of steps is reduced” compared with the manufacture of conventional solar cells, Belcher says.

Those factors will help to make it “easy to get to large scale cheaply,” Chen adds.

Battery pileup ahead

One motivation for using the lead in old car batteries is that battery technology is undergoing rapid change, with new, more efficient types, such as lithium-ion batteries, swiftly taking over the market. “Once the battery technology evolves, over 200 million lead-acid batteries will potentially be retired in the United States, and that could cause a lot of environmental issues,” Belcher says.

Today, she says, 90 percent of the lead recovered from the recycling of old batteries is used to produce new batteries, but over time the market for new lead-acid batteries is likely to decline, potentially leaving a large stockpile of lead with no obvious application.

In a finished solar panel, the lead-containing layer would be fully encapsulated by other materials, as many solar panels are today, limiting the risk of lead contamination of the environment. When the panels are eventually retired, the lead can simply be recycled into new solar panels.

“The process to encapsulate them will be the same as for polymer cells today,” Chen says. “That technology can be easily translated.”

“It is important that we consider the life cycles of the materials in large-scale energy systems,” Hammond says. “And here we believe the sheer simplicity of the approach bodes well for its commercial implementation.”

Old lead is as good as new

Belcher believes that the recycled perovskite solar cells will be embraced by other photovoltaics researchers, who can now fine-tune the technology for maximum efficiency. The team’s work clearly demonstrates that lead recovered from old batteries is just as good for the production of perovskite solar cells as freshly produced metal.

Some companies are already gearing up for commercial production of perovskite photovoltaic panels, which could otherwise require new sources of lead. Since this could expose miners and smelters to toxic fumes, the introduction of recycling instead could provide immediate benefits, the team says.

Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles who was not involved in this research, says, “Wow, what an interesting paper, that turns the waste of one system into a valuable resource for another! I think the work demonstrated here … can resolve a major issue of industrial waste, and provide a solution for future renewable energy.”

The work, which also included research scientist Jifa Qi, graduate student Matthew Klug and postdoc Xiangnan Dang, was supported by Italian energy company Eni through the MIT Energy Initiative.

This article is a repost, credit: MIT.

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Hurricane Iselle taking aim at Big Island of Hawaii

August 7, 2014 in Climate Change, Environment, EV News

Hurricane Iselle continues on a path toward Hawaii as a Category 1 storm, with max. sustained winds near 90 mph. Some weakening is forecast during the next 48 hours, but Iselle is now expected to be a hurricane as it passes near or over the Big Island Thursday night, before passing just south of the smaller islands of Hawaii on Friday. A Hurricane Warning is currently in place for the Big Island.

Graphic courtesy of NOAA

Graphic courtesy of NOAA

A Tropical Preparedness Tip from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center

Develop a family disaster preparedness plan now:

  1. Determine evacuation routes from your home and places to meet. Determine the location of official shelters. Have an out of state contact, so all your family members have a single point of contact.
  2. Make a plan for what to do with your pets if you need to evacuate. Check your insurance coverage; flood damage is not usually covered by homeowners insurance.

This article is a repost, credit: NOAA. Video courtesy of NASA.

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IBM to make free supercomputing power available to sustainability scientists

July 30, 2014 in Climate Change, Environment, EV News, Politics

Dr. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, PhD (center), associate professor in Harvard University's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, discusses his group's Clean Energy Project running on IBM's World Community Grid, with Dr. Viktors Berstis, PhD (right), lead scientist for World Community Grid and IBM Master Inventor Photo courtesy of IBM

Dr. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, PhD (center), associate professor in Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, discusses his group’s Clean Energy Project running on IBM’s World Community Grid, with Dr. Viktors Berstis, PhD (right), lead scientist for World Community Grid and IBM Master Inventor
Photo courtesy of IBM

ARMONK, N.Y. – 29 Jul 2014: In support of the updated Climate Data Initiative announced by the White House today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) will provide eligible scientists studying climate change-related issues with free access to dedicated virtual supercomputing and a platform to engage the public in their research.

Each approved project will have access to up to 100,000 years of computing time at a value of $60 million. The work will be performed on IBM’s philanthropic World Community Grid platform.

Created and managed by IBM, World Community Grid provides computing power to scientists by harnessing the unused cycle time of volunteers’ computers and mobile devices.  Participants get involved by downloading software that runs when they take breaks or work on lightweight computer tasks, such as browsing the internet.  The software receives, completes, and returns small computational assignments to scientists. The combined power contributed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers has created one of the fastest virtual supercomputers on the planet, advancing scientific work by hundreds of years.

IBM invites researchers to submit sustainability project proposals to receive this free resource, and invites members of the public to donate their unused computing power to these efforts at worldcommunitygrid.org.

Through the contributions of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, World Community Grid has already provided sustainability researchers with many millions of dollars of computing power to date, enabling important advances in scientific inquiry and understanding.

For example, World Community Grid partnered with the University of Virginia on Computing for Sustainable Water, which studied the effects of human activity on the Chesapeake Bay watershed to understand what actions can lead to restoration, health and sustainability of this important resource.

Harvard University’s Clean Energy Project has identified more than 35,000 materials with the potential to double carbon-based solar cell efficiency, after screening and publicly cataloguing more than two-million compounds on World Community Grid. This is believed to be the world’s most extensive quantum chemical investigation to date. Until now, carbon-based solar cells were made from a handful of molecules that were painstakingly discovered one by one. With Harvard’s work, there’s thousands more to explore.

World Community Grid’s partnership with the University of Washington on Nutritious Rice for the World modeled rice proteins and predicted their function to help farmers breed new strains with higher yields and greater disease and pest resistance, potentially providing new options for regions facing changing climate conditions.

“Through his Climate Data Initiative, President Obama is calling for all hands on deck to unleash data and technology in ways that will make businesses and communities more resilient to climate change,” said John P. Holdren, President Obama’s Science Advisor. “The commitments being announced today answer that call by empowering the U.S. and global agricultural sectors with the tools and information needed to keep food systems strong and secure in a changing climate.”

World Community Grid is welcomed by researchers who don’t have the funds or dedicated access to powerful supercomputers that can accelerate their simulations and virtual experiments. It has been used to facilitate research into clean energy, clean water and healthy foodstuffs, as well as cures for cancer, AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

“Massive computer power is as essential to modern-day scientific research as test tubes and telescopes,” said Stanley S. Litow, IBM Vice President, Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs and President, IBM International Foundation. “But due to scarce funding for research, pioneering scientists often don’t have access to supercomputers vast enough to meet their research objectives. At IBM, we hope that the equivalent of 100,000 years of computing time per scientist will speed the next major breakthrough to help the world meet the challenge of climate change.”

Nearly three-million computers and mobile devices used by over 670,000 people and 460 institutions from 80 countries have contributed power for projects on World Community Grid over the last nine years. Since the program’s inception, World Community Grid volunteers have powered over 20 research projects, donating nearly a million years of computing time to scientific research and enabled important scientific advances in health and sustainability.

For more information on World Community Grid, pease visit http://worldcommunitygrid.org/

For more information about IBM’s philanthropic efforts, please visit www.CitizenIBM.com

This article is a repost (7-29-14), credit: IBM.

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