By GRETCHEN WILSO
Monitoring places like Antarctica and Canada with satellites in the Microwave Earth Remote Sensing lab shows some BYU students distant locations while giving them vital information about the Earth’s climate.
David Early, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical and computer engineering, from Lake Oswego, Ore., said the lab monitors indicators of change in the global climate.
“We work on small pieces of information that other researchers need for models of the Earth’s climate. Understanding these little bits help predict what could happen on a larger scale,” Early said.
He studies the effects of the global temperature on Antarctic Ocean ice. How far and fast the ice grows shows the rate of global warming, while less ice is a positive sign of less warming.
“I measure characteristics like how thick, new, dry or wet the ice is,” Early said. “Someone else interprets the data.”
Early can look at the entire Antarctic Ocean in two or three days. “Engineering provides methods of monitoring. Other monitors can’t measure on the same scale that we can,” he said.
While some researchers want to predict global environmental trends, other researchers would just like to predict the weather.
“They’d like to predict the weather seven days in advance, but they can’t do that accurately right now,” Early said. “In theory, we’ll be able to build an accurate model of how the Earth’s climate works, allowing accurate weather predictions.”
Jay Wilson, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering from Caruthersville, Mo., used radars mounted on satellites to study data on Canada’s boreal forest collected between Jan. 1992 and May 1995.
Wilson said understanding the boreal forest on a large scale is important because the forest covers a huge area, and the forest is the Earth’s lung.
“We can use the information in the future to see if human impact is affecting the climate. Things such as pollution, deforestation and logging affect the forest and the climate,” Wilson said.
The lab uses the same kind of energy found in a microwave oven people use to cook food. “It’s at a lower power level so we don’t cook the Earth,” Wilson said.
David Long, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, helped establish the lab. Many research projects conducted in the lab are funded by NASA. About 10 students work in the lab.
“Faculty write research proposals, get students to help and NASA funds most of the projects,” Long said.
Early said the most important thing to remember about the research is that it strictly monitors the climate.
“Without us, there’s no way of predicting an accurate earth model,” Early said. “People take the global climate very seriously. We can say it’s getting warmer. But we don’t know if we’re causing it, or if it’s occurring naturally.”
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