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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 217 records · Page 12
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NASA NTRS2018

Building a Quality Controlled Database of Meteorological Data from NASA Kennedy Space Center and the United States Air Force's Eastern Range

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Natural Environments Branch (EV44) has provided atmospheric databases and analysis in support of space vehicle design and day-of-launch operations for NASA and commercial launch vehicle programs launching from the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), co-located on the United States Air Force's Eastern Range (ER) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The ER complex is one of the most heavily instrumented sites in the United States with over 31 towers measuring various atmospheric parameters on a continuous basis. An inherent challenge with large sets of data consists of ensuring erroneous data is removed from databases, and thus excluded from launch vehicle design analyses. EV44 has put forth great effort in developing quality control (QC) procedures for individual meteorological instruments, however no standard QC procedures for all databases currently exists resulting in QC databases that have inconsistencies in variables, methodologies, and periods of record. The goal of this activity is to use the previous efforts by EV44 to develop a standardized set of QC procedures from which to build meteorological databases from KSC and the ER, while maintaining open communication with end users from the launch community to develop ways to improve, adapt and grow the QC database. Details of the QC procedures will be described. As the rate of launches increases with additional launch vehicle programs, it is becoming more important that weather databases are continually updated and checked for data quality before use in launch vehicle design and certification analyses.

Brenton, James C.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Building a QC Database of Meteorological Data From NASA KSC and the United States Air Force's Eastern Range

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Natural Environments Branch (EV44) has provided atmospheric databases and analysis in support of space vehicle design and day-of-launch operations for NASA and commercial launch vehicle programs launching from the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), co-located on the United States Air Force's Eastern Range (ER) at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The ER is one of the most heavily instrumented sites in the United States measuring various atmospheric parameters on a continuous basis. An inherent challenge with the large databases that EV44 receives from the ER consists of ensuring erroneous data are removed from the databases, and thus excluded from launch vehicle design analyses. EV44 has put forth great effort in developing quality control (QC) procedures for individual meteorological instruments; however, no standard QC procedures for all databases currently exist resulting in QC databases that have inconsistencies in variables, methodologies, and periods of record. The goal of this activity is to use the previous efforts by EV44 to develop a standardized set of QC procedures from which to build flags within the meteorological databases from KSC and the ER, while maintaining open communication with end users from the launch community to develop ways to improve, adapt and grow the QC database. Details of the QC checks are described. The flagged data points will be plotted in a graphical user interface (GUI) as part of a manual confirmation that the flagged data do indeed need to be removed from the archive. As the rate of launches increases with additional launch vehicle programs, more emphasis is being placed to continually update and check weather databases for data quality before use in launch vehicle design and certification analyses.

Brenton, James C.↗
NASA NTRS2018

The Impact of Local Meteorological Conditions on Airframe Noise Flight Test Data

Phased microphone array measurements obtained during flight tests conducted in 2016 and 2017 are used to assess the importance of local meteorological measurements on the data. In particular, the effectiveness of atmospheric absorption corrections is evaluated under vastly different temperature and humidity conditions. The results indicate that, even under conditions with high absorption, sources can be visualized up to a frequency that is dependent on background noise levels, wind, and atmospheric turbulence. However, absolute levels were found to be problematic on days with high absorption rates, with the discrepancies most prevalent for aircraft positions further from the center of the array. Restricting the data to those days with favorable meteorological conditions generally resulted in a good collapse of the spectra, with differences less than a couple of decibels.

Lockard, David P.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Saildrone Baja Field Campaign: A Comparison of Surface Meteorology with GEOS Products

The Saildrone Baja field campaign was an international effort to collect measurements across the air-sea interface for a 62-day period between April 11-June 11, 2018. The field campaign was executed using a saildrone, an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) carrying a comprehensive suite of instruments to measure meteorological, ocean surface, and subsurface data. We use these data to validate near-surface meteorology and ocean surface temperature fields in theGlobal Earth Observing System (GEOS). This is the first study using Saildrone data to validate GEOS products. As these USV platforms become more prevalent, they could be used to improve model representation of the air-sea interface variables.

Akella, Santha↗
NASA NTRS1992

Micro-Sensors for in-situ Meteorological Measurements

Improved in-situ meteorological measurements are needed for monitoring the weather and climate of the terrestrial and martian atmospheres. We have initiated a program to assess the feasibility and utility of micro-sensors for precise in-situ meteorological measurements in these environments. Sensors are being developed for measuring pressure, temperature, wind velocity, humidity, and aerosol amounts.

Micro-Sensors↗
NASA NTRS2022

Assimilation of GPM-retrieved Ocean Surface Meteorology Data for Two Snowstorm Events during ICE-POP 2018

As a component of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Weather Focus Area and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Ground Validation participation in the International Collaborative Experiments for PyeongChang 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (ICE-POP 2018) field research and forecast demonstration programs, hourly ocean surface meteorology properties were retrieved from the GPM microwave observations for January – March 2018. In this study, the retrieved ocean surface meteorological products – 2-m temperature, 2-m specific humidity, and 10-m wind speed were assimilated into a regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) framework to explore the application of these observations for two heavy snowfall events during the ICE-POP 2018: 27-28 February, and 7-8 March 2018. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and the community Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) were used to conduct high resolution simulations and data assimilation experiments. The results indicate that the data assimilation has a large influence on surface thermodynamic and wind fields in the model initial condition for both events. With cycled data assimilation, significantly positive influence of the retrieved surface observation was found for the March case with improved quantitative precipitation forecast and reduced error in temperature forecast. A slightly smaller yet positive impact was also found in the forecast of the February case.

assimilation↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Overview of the Meteorological Instrumentation Utilized for the Design and Operations of Space Launch Vehicles

One of the first hurdles a space vehicle must overcome is the ability to successfully traverse Earth’s atmosphere. In order to achieve this goal, there must exist both climatological and real-time atmospheric data from the surface to the Karman line. The Natural Environments Branch at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Marshall Space Flight Center utilizes both traditional and specialized meteorological instrumentation to aide in both the design and operations of launch vehicles. Weather balloons measuring thermodynamic and wind data from 0 - 70 kft are an example of the more traditional instrumentation. While the Tropospheric Doppler Radar Weather Profiler that measures winds from roughly 5 kft – 60 kft every five minutes is an example of a more specialized instrument. Other instruments include: 915 MHz Doppler Radar Wind Profilers, rain gauges, meteorological towers, lightning detection networks, Automated Weather Observing System stations, Mobile Launcher weather stations, and more. This presentation will give a high-level overview of which instruments are utilized, how the data are acquired, and how the data are ultimately used in design and/or operations.

Nathan L. Curtis↗
NASA NTRS2024

Mesosphere and Lower Thermosphere Temperatures Simulated by WACCM‐X With NAVGEM‐HA Meteorological Analyses and Compared to SABER Observations

Realistic modeling of the dynamics and variability in the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere (UMLT) is critical to understand the coupling between different layers of the whole atmosphere system. Here we present simulations of the UMLT temperatures at ∼100 km altitude for one year during 2014 by the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model with thermosphere-ionosphere extension (WACCM-X) constrained below ∼90 km using meteorological analysis products of the high-altitude version of Navy Global Environmental Model (NAVGEM-HA). The model results are sampled at the same times and latitudes and longitudes as the satellite observations from Thermosphere Ionosphere and Mesosphere Electric Dynamics/Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (TIMED/SABER). Comparisons show that the observed and modeled daily zonal mean temperatures are correlated (r ∼0.5–0.7) at most latitudes between ±50°. Both the observations and simulations show an annual variation at mid-latitudes in two hemispheres with the temperature maximum in summer and the minimum in winter, and at lower latitudes the semiannual variation becomes stronger having the temperature maximums at equinoxes and the minimums during solstices. However, the temperatures observed are on average ∼5–10 K (3%–5%) smaller than the model and the observations show a larger variability. Moreover, migrating tidal amplitudes are mostly overestimated by the model. Though differences are noticed, the WACCM-X simulations with NAVGEM-HA meteorological analyses are overall consistent with the SABER observations. These results support that whole atmosphere models informed by high altitude observations would help to simulate the UMLT variability and the atmosphere and ionosphere coupling.

Guiping Liu↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Power: Global Solar Insolation, Meteorological Parameter Data, and Web Services to Support Sustainable Building Design and Operations

The buildings industry is currently striving to adopt green solutions to make infrastructure more energy-efficient in order to meet the 2050 net-zero climate goals. This planning requires reliable environmental datasets that are crucial in designing, building, and maintaining our world’s-built environment, as well as other energy-related processes and investments. This webinar for the National Institute of Building Sciences provides an overview of NASA’s Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) Project that informs decision-making and development for sustainable building design and operations by enabling public open discovery, efficient access, and convenient distribution of NASA’s Earth Observations and global atmospheric model datasets. POWER’s datastore is comprised of solar radiation and surface meteorology parameters, spanning nearly 40 years of hourly data, that are easily accessible via several access methods and tools to support three focus areas: 1) renewable energy deployment and management, 2) sustainable infrastructure, and 3) agroclimatology applications. POWER and NASA Earth Science both plan future data parameters, updated tools, and improved observations that could directly support U.S. and international sustainable development goals, climate strategies, and building information modeling. To this end, solar data from several NASA projects and meteorological data from NASA assimilation models have already been reformatted and disseminated to the public via a user-friendly web GIS-enabled based data portal through the POWER Project. POWER data is analysis-ready and accessible through an Application Programming Interface (API), ArcGIS Image Services, and the project’s Data Access Viewer enhanced (DAVe), an interactive online tool. The POWER DAVe also features data consistent with ASHRAE Climate Design Conditions and has developed web image services showing Building Climate Zones and their variability. Through those tools, the data can be downloaded into multiple formats that support the infrastructure community, including CSV and Energy Plus Weather (EPW). POWER’s entire data product catalog is available through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Open Data Registry (ODR) via a free and publicly accessible Simple Storage Service (S3). This webinar provides a full overview of the NASA POWER Project's data and services developed in collaboration with the sustainable infrastructure community. Examples of how the renewable energy and building communities have utilized POWER data products to make decisions and a preview of future data product expansion, including climate projections, and web services will also be provided. Additionally, use case stories from our broad community of users will be presented.

Paul W. Stackhouse↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Characterizing Spatiotemporal Uncertainty in Interpolated Meteorological Data

Interpolated meteorological data invariably contain errors. These errors have structure in time and space, particularly autocorrelation, which can cause the effects of errors to compound when model outputs are aggregated temporally or spatially. One way to account for this uncertainty is with a probabilistic model from which samples can be drawn that are coherent with respect to underlying spatial and temporal covariance structure. This work describes a probabilistic method for spatial interpolation of point-wise meteorological time series. Observational data from weather stations are generally sparse in space and dense in time (but sometimes missing). The method works by projecting time series onto orthogonal basis vectors and spatially interpolating each resulting component independently. Under suitable assumptions, and data transformations to better satisfy those assumptions, Gaussian process regression provides a complete description of the joint predictive distribution over a Gaussian random field. Spatiotemporally coherent realizations are generated as the sum of conditional (spatial) simulations of each orthogonal (temporal) component. Data-derived and generic orthogonal bases are considered. In addition to spatial interpolation, imputation of missing observational data is examined. The method is applied using near-surface air temperature over the Western United States and validated by comparing theoretical versus actual coverage of predictive distributions and analyzing the degree to which spatial and temporal covariance structure is reproduced. Computational considerations, relating to conditional simulation of random fields, are also addressed.

Conor T Doherty↗
NASA NTRS1965

Meteorology from space.

Rockets and spacecraft as tools for meteorological observations in upper atmosphere, discussing temperature variations, wind pressure patterns and demarcated zone

UPPER ATMOSPHERE↗
NASA NTRS1956

Flight Investigation of the Performance of a Two-stage Solid-propellant Nike-deacon (DAN) Meteorological Sounding Rocket

A flight investigation of two Nike-Deacon (DAN) two-stage solid-propellant rocket vehicles indicated satisfactory performance may be expected from the DAN meteorological sounding rocket. Peak altitudes of 356,000 and 350,000 feet, respectively, were recorded for the two flight tests when both vehicles were launched from sea level at an elevation angle of 75 degrees. Performance calculations based on flight-test results show that altitudes between 358,000 feet and 487,000 feet may be attained with payloads varying between 60 pounds and 10 pounds.

MISSILES, SPECIFIC TYPES↗
NASA NTRS1962

METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITES

This paper presents a status report on the progress of the Meteorological Satellite Program. In this review, I shall try to emphasize primarily the accomplishments since May 1961 when a report on the program was given to the First National Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is now one year later, and it is fitting that we stop and take stock of what we have been doing and where we are heading.

Meteorological satellite↗