NASA Planes Fly Over Bay Area To Measure Air Pollution Levels

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."

Comments

which bay would that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

not everyone lives in san fransisco, you know

Re:which bay would that be?

[afaik_ianal]

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

Re:which bay would that be?

[AK Marc]

Bay Area. Where's the confusion?

Re:which bay would that be?

[MisterSquid]

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:which bay would that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:which bay would that be?

[oursland]

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.

Re:which bay would that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:which bay would that be?

[wonkey_monkey]

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.

Re:which bay would that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because nobody is as self-centered as east coasters.

Re:which bay would that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe they are referring to Hudson Bay!

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

Re:which bay would that be?

[Internal Modem]

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 Bay Area, in California
San Diego Bay Area, in California

Gulf Coast:
Galveston Bay Area, in Texas
Tampa Bay Area, in Florida



Source: wikipedia

Re:which bay would that be?

[nrozema]

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.

Re:which bay would that be?

[camperdave]

Economics says that pesticides in the air don't do a damn bit of good.

Surely that depends on where your pests are.

Re:which bay would that be?

[werewolf1031]

...said the west-coaster.

Aha

[Cyphase]

That must have been the noise I heard ~20 minutes ago.

Abbreviation

[fotoguzzi]

Why is it not DISCOVEROR-AQ ?

Infinite loop!

[sjwt]

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.

Re:Infinite loop!

[Lorem_Ipsum]

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

Looking for stuff to do

[Compaqt]

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.

Re:Looking for stuff to do

[Jerslan]

National Aeronautics & Space Agency.... Pretty sure that means they were never JUST a space agency

Re:Looking for stuff to do

[Bartles]

What exactly does pollution research have to do with aeronautics?

Re:Looking for stuff to do

[VortexCortex]

It's a byproduct.

Re:What fucker(s) keeps making these bullshit acro

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:What fucker(s) keeps making these bullshit acro

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

It's called "straining at GNATs" (Garish Name Acquisition Techniques).

Re:What fucker(s) keeps making these bullshit acro

[VortexCortex]

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.

Re:Most Likely Mod Off Topic

[VortexCortex]

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.

Tin foil hat time

[OzPeter]

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.

Re:Tin foil hat time

[sumdumass]

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..

Bureaucrats strike again

[Jay Maynard]

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

DISCOVER-AQ stands for

[fredrated]

repurposing yourself to justify your existance.

Correct

[PPalmgren]

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.

Re:Terrible Article

[camperdave]

Ahem!