CIM advances with its study of the impact of climate change on the upper layers of the atmosphere

Juan Antonio Añel from the University of Vigo’s Marine Research Centre, (CIM), a member of the CIGUS Network, an initiative launched by the regional government (Xunta de Galicia) that groups together centres of accredited scientific excellence, is leading an international team working on a project funded by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) to study the impact of climate change on the planet’s upper atmosphere, satellite orbiting and space debris. This week, the team is holding its second meeting at the ISSI headquarters in Bern, Switzerland, to assess the progress made to date.

Eleven institutions from seven countries are involved in the project. In addition to the University of Vigo, they include the University of Oxford, NASA, the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the UK Centre for Antarctic Research, Charles University in the Czech Republic, the National Institute of Advanced Research in India, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Netherlands Meteorological Institute and the University of Leeds. Representing the University of Vigo are Juan Antonio Añel, as project leader, and Laura de la Torre, from the Environmental Physics Laboratory Group (Ephyslab-Maritime Research Centre) and also teaching staff from the School of Aeronautical and Space Engineering from the university’s Ourense campus.

Objectives and advances

Several objectives have been identified within the framework of this project. As Juan Antonio Añel states, the first of these is to assess “exactly where we are in order to monitor the impacts of climate change on the upper layers of the atmosphere, as there is currently an urgent need for data and observation systems and the satellite missions scheduled for the coming years will not resolve these problems”. The researcher went on to explain that current knowledge regarding the impact of climate change continues to be “severely limited” to the surface and lower sections of the planet. Another of the project’s objectives is to create a database for observations of the middle atmosphere in order to be able to study these impacts better and quantify carbon dioxide emissions into the ionosphere as well as certain properties of the upper atmosphere, such as electron density. “This is important because it is affecting the navigation of satellites and their re-entry time into the atmosphere, increasing the time that space debris remains in orbit and therefore increasing its quantity,” Añel explained. Finally, a report will be drawn up within the framework of this initiative, with recommendations on how to solve these problems.

In addition to outlining the team members’ progress in each of these objectives, Juan Antonio Añel pointed out that at this second meeting “due to the vast number of satellites we are putting into orbit, we have started to discuss the impacts that their re-entry into the atmosphere may have on the environment, due to the chemical components that are released when they burn up in the atmosphere”. He went on to state that “we continue to be concerned about the lack of satellites and measurement systems to observe the upper atmosphere, and are working to support candidate missions to be launched by the European Space Agency that could help alleviate this situation, such as CAIRT or KEYSTONE and the University of Bern’s CHESS, and also with the support of ESA and the International Astronautical Federation”.