NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

True-color corrected reflectance image overlaid with a layer showing high chlorophyll a concentrations off the coast of California on May 8, 2024 (indicated in colors of red/dark red). This layer provides the near-surface concentration of chlorophyll a in milligrams of chlorophyll pigment per cubic meter (mg/m3). The image was acquired by the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) aboard the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite.

Astrobiology - Algal blooms have become a common occurrence on Lake Erie, as much a part of summer at the lake as island-hopping, scenic cruises, and roller coasters. In 2024, a bloom of blue-green algae began forming in the lake’s western basin on June 24—the earliest that a bloom has been identified by NOAA since the agency began tracking them in 2002. It was still present in early September. Bloom season can last into October, with its duration depending on the frequency of wind events that mix lake waters in the fall.

06:00 Local Time: Go/No-Go Meeting We are in the field supporting PACE-PAX (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment), a multi-disciplinary mission that involves two aircraft—the NASA ER-2 and CIRPAS Twin Otter—and several mobile ocean assets, all helping to validate observations and data products from NASA’s new satellite observation platform, PACE. Our days typically start with an initial look at the weather in the area of operations and airport conditions during takeoff and landing.