Magnificent nice frigatebirds can routinely fly over a mile excessive, and typically twice that top, and even larger. And that’s why scientists have been using birds with backpacks for Earth research. The American Geophysical Union printed this original story on December 12, 2023. Edits and video by EarthSky.
Scientists usually subject examine their findings, heading outdoors to see if laptop fashions match with what is occurring in the true world. However doing so is difficult when the sphere is 2 1/2 miles (4,000 m) up. Enter a brand new subject assistant: the great frigatebird.
Nice frigatebirds reside in tropical areas and routinely fly to 1.25 miles (2,000 meters) in altitude. Sometimes they even attain heights of two.5 miles (4,000 meters). A brand new research reveals that nice frigatebirds outfitted with tiny sensors can provide detailed details about the planetary boundary layer. The planetary boundary layer is the dynamic atmospheric layer closest to Earth. It’s the place we expertise climate, air high quality and local weather impacts. Scientists offered the new research on the AGU Annual Assembly on Wednesday, December 13, 2023, in San Francisco and on-line.
The 2024 lunar calendars are here! Best Christmas gifts in the universe! Check ’em out here.
Investigating the planetary boundary layer
The planetary boundary layer connects the ambiance with the floor ocean, land and ice. It rises and falls all through the day. Ian Brosnan, a marine scientist at NASA’s Ames Analysis Middle who led the work, mentioned:
Many climate and local weather processes are associated to that fluctuation. So understanding planetary boundary layer dynamics is key to answering loads of questions concerning the Earth system.
Present methods sometimes depend on ground-based measurements or distant sensing, however for far-flung areas over the oceans, Brosnan mentioned:
… getting in situ samples of any kind at scale is a problem.
Enter the good frigatebirds
Brosnan’s co-author, NASA ecologist Morgan Gilmour, beforehand used sensor-laden nice frigatebirds to evaluate whether or not the boundaries of a marine protected space round Palmyra Atoll within the Pacific Ocean protected the animals inside it. Brosnan suspected the frigatebirds’ flights had been associated to the planetary boundary layer. If that’s the case, Gilmore’s mission had additionally collected important planetary boundary layer samples. Brosnan mentioned:
I immediately thought the birds may very well be touring to the highest of the planetary boundary layer, turning round, and coming again down. And so they’re most likely overlaying a reasonably broad space, too.
To examine if the birds’ flight patterns matched planetary boundary layer altitudes, they in contrast planetary boundary layer measurements from 2006-2019 evaluation to frigatebirds’ flights. They discovered that the long-term common planetary boundary layer heights in that space very intently matched the fowl’s altitude information. Brosnan’s hunch was proper.
The tagged frigatebirds had sampled temperature profiles within the planetary boundary layer and had no hassle amassing information throughout cloudy climate or at night time, in contrast to conventional sampling approaches. Brosnan mentioned:
These novel approaches to utilizing animal monitoring information may also help NASA measure the planetary boundary layer and enhance local weather predictions and climate and air high quality forecasts.
Web of Animals
Brosnan talked about that after listening to from interagency scientists about how necessary world, satellite-based animal monitoring information was for his or her analysis tasks, NASA created the Internet of Animals mission. This enables scientists to combine information from distant sensing measurements with information from sensors on animals, now together with the good frigatebird planetary boundary layer information.
Brosnan mentioned their work is an efficient instance of how interagency and interdisciplinary collaborations may also help sort out bigger science questions:
One of many issues we’re making an attempt to do is bridge between these two communities – animal monitoring and atmospheric science – and see if we are able to enrich the work that we each do.
Backside line: A brand new research from NASA’s ‘Web of Animals’ mission reveals that high-flying nice frigatebirds can present detailed sampling of the atmospheric layer positioned closest to Earth, the place climate and local weather straight influence us.
Read more: Animals on the brain? There’s a scientific reason
