The Israeli Space Agency recently announced a new collaboration with the French Space Agency in which three tiny satellites will be developed, built and launched into space to study climate change. The array of satellites will for the first time investigate the growth speed of clouds from space, and will help to solve the riddle of the role of clouds in climate change and hence to find solutions to the problems that arise from it. At the end of the development and construction, the three satellites will be launched as one group and will move in formation flight.
"The scientists from Israel will take part in finding solutions to questions that trouble all of humanity in the context of climate change and global warming," said today the Director of the Israel Space Agency in the Ministry of Science, Avi Blasberger. "This is the fourth joint research mission with France in the last year as part of the close cooperation in space research and the development of joint space technologies."
The satellite array that will be developed will be used to measure the main factors that affect the energy of the climate system and climate changes, which until now could not be measured with the required precision. As part of the research mission of the satellites, the mechanism by which clouds are formed, grow and affect the temperature of the earth, as well as the formation of thunderstorms, will be investigated.
The satellites will perform three types of measurements simultaneously: the first, photography from three different angles that create a three-dimensional mapping of the clouds and allows monitoring of their development over time. The data will make it possible to calculate the strength of the vertical winds that build the clouds - a factor that has not been measured from satellites until now. The second, a spectral measurement of the composition of molecules of various types surrounding the cloud, including water vapor and nitrogen oxides. The simultaneous measurements will make it possible to find the most important factor in the influence of clouds on the climate system. The third, the measurement of the lightning that forms inside clouds and their consequences on the concentration of greenhouse gases such as ozone.
According to the scientists, the measurements will contribute to building a more complete picture of the climate system in general and clouds in particular, about which today knowledge is still lacking and which is necessary for understanding climate change.
On the Israeli side, scientists from three universities are taking part: from the Hebrew University: Prof. Danny Rosenfeld from the Institute of Earth Sciences, who is also the scientific coordinator, and Prof. Nir Shabib, chairman of the Rakah Institute for Physics. From the Technion: Prof. Giura Shabib, Dr. Smeder Bresler and Dr. Erez Rybak, from the Faculty of Physics, researchers of the "Asher" Space Research Institute and Prof. Yoav Shechner, from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering named after Viterbi, from Tel Aviv University: Prof. Colin Price from the Center Interpreted Herzliya Prof. Yoav Yair.
On the French side the leading scientists are Céline Cornet from the University of Lille, Cathy Clerbaux, and Eric Defer from CNRS.
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