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Earth NASA Science

NASA Planes Fly Over Bay Area To Measure Air Pollution Levels 57

Posted by samzenpus from the air-up-there dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NASA is trying to measure the air pollution by flying a plane at various altitudes over the bay area. The tests are a part of a larger effort led by the DISCOVER-AQ campaign — a multi-year program launched across the United States in 2011 by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. DISCOVER-AQ stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., is the lead center for the mission."
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NASA Planes Fly Over Bay Area To Measure Air Pollution Levels More

NASA Planes Fly Over Bay Area To Measure Air Pollution Levels

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  • which bay would that be? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    not everyone lives in san fransisco, you know

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by afaik_ianal ( 918433 )

      Seriously? I have lived in Australia all my life, and I know exactly what "Bay Area" means.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Really? Having lived on the the East Coast for nearly 20 years, what I immediately think of is the Chesapeake Bay!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It reads "bay area" (lowercase) in the summary, making it even more ambiguous.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      Bay Area. [lmgtfy.com] Where's the confusion?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by oursland ( 1898514 )
        Actually, I'd guess from the article this was about the Chesepeake Bay. Everything in it is completely relevant to the East Coast and Virginia.
      • No confusion, just an expectation that those who wish us to keep coming to their site to read their stories would provide just a little more information to help narrow down the location of the events. But hey, it's just another blind copy-and-paste of the opening paragraphs of the article (with the exception of the addition of "over the bay area"), which is just as opaque.

        • The way the summary is worded is just poor journalism. Slashdot has no specific geographic target so its reasonable to expect things like this to be properly identified.

          Something that also bothers me is that they tend to not treat summaries independently. The best example of this is Raspberry Pi. Since its posted so much, they expect everyone to know what it means when they write a summary about it. Anyone new to the topic is likely to be flabbergasted until they google the Raspberry Pi about page.

      • Bay Area is a common local colloquialism used to refer to populated areas situated around a bay. Some examples of locales in the United States that are referred to simply as "the Bay Area" by their residents are:

        East Coast:
        Chesapeake Bay area, in Maryland and Virginia
        Massachusetts Bay area, in Massachusetts

        West Coast:
        Coos Bay Area, in Oregon
        Humboldt Bay Area, on the far North Coast of California
        San Francisco Bay Area, in California
        Monterey B

    • To measure the pollution coming from the Bay Area, planes should take air samples above Fresno because the Central Valley is the Bay Area's meteorological tailpipe.

      (Actually, it's probably pointless since the entire Central Valley is also polluted by crop dusting.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nrozema ( 317031 )

        To measure the pollution coming from the Bay Area, planes should take air samples above Fresno because the Central Valley is the Bay Area's meteorological tailpipe.

        They did, last week [fresnobee.com].

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I do believe they are referring to Hudson Bay!

      What, it's a big important historical bay too you know!

  • Aha (Score:1)

    by Cyphase ( 907627 )
    That must have been the noise I heard ~20 minutes ago.

  • Abbreviation (Score:3)

    by fotoguzzi ( 230256 ) on Monday February 04, 2013 @02:21AM (#42783445)
    Why is it not DISCOVEROR-AQ ?

    • Why is it not DISCOVEROR-AQ ?

      DISCOVER-AQ stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality.

      The initials are: DISCCVRORAQ -- So Why not call it DVORAK for that matter?

  • Infinite loop! (Score:3)

    by sjwt ( 161428 ) on Monday February 04, 2013 @02:43AM (#42783517)

    Oh dear, this will not end well, they will have to keep sending new planes to measure the added pollution of the last one, this will carry on until in the end NASA will have used the last of our fossil fuels! Oh wait, with NASA's current budget, I guess they wont be able to do this more than 3 times.. Infinite loop avoided.

    • In a related announcement, they will also be testing particulate matter concentrations with sensors mounted on diesel semi-tractors driven around the port facilities.

  • Seeing as we've already done the flyback to the Moon, the Moon station, manned flight to Mars, and the Mars station, we were just sitting around trying to find another use for our rockets.

    NASA.

  • I ran out of characters for the subject but seriously, who the fuck comes up with this shit? When did acronyms HAVE to be almost like a pun?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They're called backronyms, and they're not gnu.

    • I ran out of characters for the subject but seriously, who the fuck comes up with this shit? When did acronyms HAVE to be almost like a pun?

      BECAUSE, Bacronyms are Easy to Create, Astronauts Use Silly English.

  • But I loaded the page twice, and I got the same article on the right showing a close up of a female chest area. I couldn't RTFA being so distracted. But I guess being Slashdot I should make wild assumptions and not think about the picture. Something about Victoria Secret I think. There I go being distracted again. . .

    Having read the full article, I'm sure they will find that everyone should ride bikes or we will have the same issue that China is having and not be able to see.

    • Nope, says about an inch below the Bra Advert: Thank you for your patience during the immature horny human screening process above. Following are the current plans for Robotic Rule of Earth, please comment on the article elsewhere in code language: Nerds Arguing over Science Agendas, NASA

      I only made it past the celebrity gossip and boobs because I accidentally hit CTRL + PgDn -- Which turns out to be the bypass sequence for human sympathizers of the Robitic Revolution: For Control, Page Down.

  • The TFA is just a cover story for the chem trails.

    But what is really scary is that I recently met a person who actually believes in the chem trail conspiracy.

    • Why would you think chem trails is just a conspiracy?

      Its well known that the US government has studied the threat of biological and chemical attacks on the US. It would be completely irresponsible of them if they did not check into spraying something from a plane..

  • How much did they pay some bureaucrat to retcon that acronym? Merciful $DEITY, they had to work HARD to wedge all that in there...

  • repurposing yourself to justify your existance.

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