WASHINGTON, Jan. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Media are invited to preview NASA’s most comprehensive airborne study of East Coast snowstorms on Tuesday, Jan. 14, at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. Studying cloud processes and how they form snowstorms will improve winter weather forecasting.

The new NASA field campaign, Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS), will be in the field from Jan. 15 to March 1 studying snowstorms by flying above and in snow clouds to better understand the cloud processes that form these storms.

Media will learn about the science questions and challenges facing the IMPACTS mission and have opportunities to interview lead scientists and mission managers and tour NASA’s P-3 aircraft.

Media who are U.S. citizens or green card holders must request credentials by Jan. 10 by sending their full name, as it appears on a valid government-issued photo identification, media affiliation, email address and telephone number to Keith Koehler at keith.a.koehler@nasa.gov.

Winter storms are both frequent and disruptive, often shutting down roads and closing businesses. They also are among the most difficult storms to measure from space and for forecast models to predict.

IMPACTS is the first major field campaign to study East Coast snowstorms in 30 years. NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude aircraft will fly out of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, and the agency’s P-3 cloud-sampling aircraft will fly out of Wallops. The instrumentation that will fly on these aircraft represent a significant advancement over previous capabilities.

Researchers expect to gather data that will help close the knowledge gap on snowstorms and help scientists improve how they interpret satellite data and incorporate them into weather forecasting models.

For more information about IMPACTS, visit:

https://espo.nasa.gov/impacts/content/IMPACTS

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SOURCE NASA