Surface and Atmospheric Budgets of Radiation in AMMA (SABRINA)

我们的气候系统，以及地球上的所有生命，都从吸收太阳辐射中获得能量。一些辐射在大气中被吸收，但大部分在地表被吸收。该系统通过从表面和大气中逃逸并辐射到太空的热辐射来平衡。令人惊讶的是，我们并没有一个非常准确的理解，与地表相比，大气吸收或释放了多少能量。为了找出这一点，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很快，只是偶尔看到进行表面测量的地点，因此很难同时进行足够的观测。我们在这个项目中想做的是利用一颗新卫星的结果，这颗卫星以适当的速度绕地球运行，使它看起来像是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的尼亚美建立的一个仪器齐全的地面站点的测量结果结合起来。这将使我们能够同时从上方和下方对同一点大气进行更多的观测。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和释放热辐射。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我们气候的未来。

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.