Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...several years NASA's scientists failed to accept data on the Antarctic ozone hole that was before their eyes. The reason: computers prescreening data from monitoring satellites had been programmed to dismiss as suspicious presumably wild data showing a 30% or greater drop in ozone levels. After British scientists reported the deficit in 1985, NASA went back to its computer records, finally recognizing that the satellite data had been showing the hole all along...
...while most scientists agree that atmospheric chemistry and dynamics are major causes, the increased scrutiny of the Antarctic atmosphere following the discovery of the hole has seriously undercut the sunspot theory. Data from Punta Arenas, says Robert Watson, a NASA scientist involved in that study, made the verdict all but final. Nitrogen and ozone levels were down, but concentrations of chlorine monoxide were 100 times as great as equivalent levels at temperate latitudes. Says Watson: "We can forget the solar theories. We can no longer debate that chlorine monoxide exists and that its abundance is high enough to destroy ozone...
From preflight preparation to landing, piloting NASA's specially equipped ER- 2 high-altitude research aircraft is not for the fainthearted. The three pilots who flew the twelve solo missions through the Antarctic ozone hole found the task grueling. An hour before zooming into the stratosphere, each had to don a bright orange pressure suit and begin breathing pure oxygen to remove nitrogen from the blood and tissues, thus preventing the bends, which can result from rapid reductions in air pressure. Once airborne, "you have to have patience," says Pilot Ron Williams, who flew the first mission. "You're strapped...
...aircraft. Even so, the real difficulty came from 40-knot gusts that tossed the plane around during landings. With special scientific instruments installed in pods on its long, droopy wings, the ER-2 is "like a big albatross -- it's heavy-winged," says Operations Manager James Cherbonneaux of NASA's Ames Research Center. While watching a particularly hairy approach to the runway at Punta Arenas, he recalls, "I chewed a little bit of my heart...
...scientists, flew no higher than 42,000 ft. on its 13 missions, and those on board were free to move about. But heavy clouds obscured views of Antarctica most of the time, and the flights were a tedious eleven hours long. Observes Atmospheric Scientist Ed Browell, of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia: "I sort of likened what we were doing to taking off from the East Coast, flying to the West Coast to do our work, then flying back East to land...