Surface and Atmospheric Budgets of Radiation in AMMA (SABRINA)

我们的气候系统和地球上的所有生命都是从吸收太阳辐射中获得能量的。有些辐射在大气中被吸收，但大部分在地表被吸收。这个系统是由热辐射平衡的，热辐射从地表和大气中逸出，并辐射到太空。令人惊讶的是，与地表相比，我们对大气吸收或释放的能量有多少并没有非常准确的了解。为了找到答案，我们需要将来自太空和地面的观测结果结合起来。一个大问题是，大多数观测地球的卫星都绕着地球飞得非常快，只能偶尔看到进行表面测量的地点，因此很难同时获得足够的观测结果。在这个项目中，我们想做的是利用一颗新卫星的结果，这颗卫星以合适的速度绕地球运行，使它看起来固定在非洲上空的太空中，并将这些结果与我们的美国项目合作伙伴在尼日尔尼亚美建立的一个仪器精良的地面站点的测量结果结合起来。这将使我们能够在同一时间，从上面和下面对同样的大气进行更多的观察。如果我们能做到这一点，我们认为我们可以更多地了解云，空气中的水蒸气，灰尘和烟雾如何吸收阳光并释放热辐射。这将有助于科学家建立更好的计算机模型，用于天气预报和预测未来的气候。

Our climate system, and all life on earth, derives its energy from the absorption of radiation from the sun. Some of the radiation is absorbed within the atmosphere, but most is absorbed at the surface. The system is balanced by heat radiation that escapes from the surface and atmosphere and is radiated away to space. Surprisingly, we don't have a very accurate understanding of just how much of this energy is absorbed or emitted by the atmosphere, compared with the surface. To find this out, we need to bring together observations from space and at the surface. One big problem is that most satellites that observe the Earth fly very quickly around it, and only occasionally see the sites where the surface measurements are made, so it's very difficult to get enough observations together that are made at the same time. What we want to do in this project is to use the results from a new satellite that goes round the Earth at just the right speed so that it appears to be fixed in space above Africa, and to put these together with measurements from a very well instrumented surface site to be set up in Niamey, Niger by our American project partners. That will enable us to get a lot more observations of the same bit of atmosphere, at the same time, from both above and below. If we can do this, we think that we can learn a lot more about how clouds, water vapour in the air and dust and smoke absorb sunshine and emit heat radiation. That will help scientists to build better computer models for weather forecasting and for predicting the future of our climate.