Boss speaks with Scientific American about importance of NASA mission

Emmanuel Boss, a professor of oceanography at the University of Maine, spoke with Scientific American for an article about four climate-related NASA satellite missions that face possible elimination under the budget proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. Boss is the science team lead of the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) project, one of the four missions targeted for potential cuts. PACE, which aims to monitor the microscopic phytoplankton that underpin the ocean food chain with finer detail than any previous satellite, would reverse a trend toward less high-resolution ocean observations in recent years, according to Boss. “The primary mission is really to increase our knowledge of the oceans and what’s in there,” he said. The mission also will monitor clouds and aerosols, two of the major sources of uncertainty in current climate change projections, the article states. Boss said there has never been a mission like this.