>> SIMON HOOK: The frequency and size of droughts
are increasing with climate change.
We can see these droughts through the satellites
that we have built and sent into space over
the last few decades.
However, our best capabilities at seeing droughts
are with satellites at the farm scale.
These satellites pass over every sixteen days,
so if there's a cloud in the way, we need
to wait another sixteen
days for an observation.
But during that period, a mega-drought could
have easily swept through, and we wouldn't
have observed if the plants were alive, or
dead, for another sixteen days.
>> JOSHUA FISHER: The ECOsystem Spaceborne
Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station,
or ECOSTRESS, will be able to detect
plant heat and water stress and water use
in ecosystems all over the planet.
To do so, we need to build the world's
most advanced spaceborne thermal radiometer,
attach it to a SpaceX rocket, launch it to
the International Space
Station, have it dock, a robotic arm removes
the instrument from the payload, attaches
it to the edge of the Station,
we connect the power and data transfers, and
send the data back to Earth where we process
and analyze them.
If any
one thing doesn't work just right, then we're
in the dark.
>> SIMON HOOK: Droughts are occurring more
frequently, are bigger, and more intense,
affecting ecosystems and agriculture
throughout the world.
For example, the recent mega-drought in the
Western U.S. in 2012 impacted 80% of agriculture.
>> JOHAN PERRET: The recent monster El Nino
caused a mega-drought to slam violently right
into Central America wreaking havoc through
our
forest and crops.
In these developing countries with limited
infrastructure, it is extremely challenging
to manage our agriculture
through these droughts, especially with the
one that we've been facing recently.
>> JOSHUA FISHER: A unique characteristic
of plants is that if there is water shortage,
then some plants will shut down,
typically in the afternoon sometime when the
sun is hot and stress is greatest.
We don't know where, when, or why
this is globally.
Moreover, our polar-orbiters fly over us only
at the same time each day, typically in the
morning, so we miss this afternoon shut down
entirely.
>> CHRISTINE LEE: The International Space
Station is a great asset for human and space
research, and has a lot of
potential for supporting more science-driven
Earth observations and studies.
In the case of ECOSTRESS, we're
leveraging the unique overpass cadence of
the Space Station to more effectively study
the condition of plants
throughout the day.
>> JOSHUA FISHER: It does this with a precessing
orbit, flying through space at a blazing fast
seventeen thousand
miles per hour!
>> DAVID COMER: Costa Rica was positioned
right in the middle of the El Nino Central
American drought.
At the same time,
it has the resources to mitigate some of these
impacts.
NASA's DEVELOP Program is designed to help
connect NASA
assets, like ECOSTRESS, to assist people around
the world in times like this.
>> KATHERINE CAVANAUGH: A key question is
what were the spatial and temporal characteristics
of the drought, and how our
existing observation capabilities could be
enhanced to improve the detection and management
of such droughts.
>> JOSHUA FISHER: We know what's happening
as droughts evolve throughout the day at very
specific locations, but our
models are disagreeing, and we have no idea
what's happening globally with our current
satellites.
So we have no
choice..
[pause]
..but to do it from the Space Station.
>> SOL KIM: The problem is that we can't see
the individual molecules of water vapor coming
out of plants from space.
>> SIMON HOOK: But, we can sense the plants'
temperature, and we know that plants will
heat up if they don't have enough
water, much like how sweat cools us.
>> SOL KIM: This allows us to transcend scales
from microns-large pores on leaves to the
entire globe.
>> IAN HEMING: From there we can derive the
evapotranspiration, which enables us to connect
the energy cycle to
the water and carbon cycle.
By tracking the amount of energy used to evaporate
water versus heat the surface, we
can know how much water was actually evaporated.
>> JOHAN PERRET: We need NASA JPL and the
DEVELOP team to help be ready to go as soon
as ECOSTRESS is in the sky.
