Projects
PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment)
Principal Investigator: Tristan L'Ecuyer, UW-Madison
Project Scientist: Brian Drouin, JPL/CalTech
PREFIRE Hypotheses
- Time-varying errors in far-infrared emissivities and atmospheric greenhouse effects (GHE) bias estimates of energy exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere in the Arctic.
- These errors are responsible for a large fraction of the spread in projected rates of Arctic warming, sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise.
PREFIRE will document, for the first time, variability in spectral fluxes from 5-45 μm on hourly to seasonal timescales.
Two 6U CubeSats in distinct 500 km altitude, near-polar (98° inclination) orbits each carrying a miniaturized IR spectrometer, covering 5- 53 μm at 0.86 μm spectral sampling, operating for one seasonal cycle (a year).
- The Arctic is Earth’s thermostat. It regulates the system by venting excess energy received in the tropics.
- Nearly 60% of Arctic emission occurs at wavelengths > 15 μm (FIR) that have never been systematically measured.
- PREFIRE improves Arctic system predictions by anchoring spectral FIR emission and atmospheric GHE.
