Earth Science
Earth scientists conduct basic research employing end-to-end expertise in observations from multiple vantage points along with theoretical modeling to characterize and understand the atmosphere, land, cryosphere and oceans on our home planet, with an overarching goal of improving predictions of future changes.
Our scientists work on a variety of current satellite and aircraft missions and instruments, including:
- Aqua AIRS - Atmospheric Infrared Sounder
- Aura MLS - Microwave Limb Sounder
- CloudSat - vertical structure of clouds
- ECOSTRESS - ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station
- EMIT - Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (2022 launch)
- GRACE-FO - Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
- JASON-3 and JASON CS - Ocean Surface Topography Mission (2020 launch)
- MAIA - Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (2022 launch)
- NDACC - Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change
- NISAR - NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (2021 launch)
- OCO-2 - Orbiting Carbon Observatory
- OCO-3 - Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3
- OMG - Oceans Melting Greenland
- PREFIRE - Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfaRed Experiment (2022 launch)
- SMAP - soil moisture and freeze thaw
- SWOT - Surface Water Ocean Topography (2021 launch)
- Terra ASTER - Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer
- Terra MISR - Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer
- TOLNet - Tropospheric Ozone Lidar Network