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Ice is melting — but what does that mean for climate science?
As is usually the case, one of the most basic questions in climate science has also been one of the most difficult to answer: How much energy is the Earth sending out into space? The pair of shoebox-sized satellites that comprise PREFIRE — Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment — could very well provide the answer.
Principal investigator Tristan L’Ecuyer, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, spoke with Heatmap about PREFIRE. Tentatively scheduled to launch in May, the project stands not only to make future climate models more accurate, but could also help shape a new generation of atmospheric exploration.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Could you tell me a little bit about your research and the work that you do?
A lot of our climate information comes from models — where I come in is trying to make sure that those predictions are rooted in actual observations of our planet. But it’s impossible to cover the whole globe with a temperature sensor or water vapor [sensor] or those sorts of things, so I’ve always focused on using satellite observations, and in particular I’ve been focusing on the exchange of energy.
Basically, what drives the climate is the incoming energy from the sun and how that’s balanced by the thermal energy that the Earth emits. One of the big influencers of that balance are clouds — they reflect the sunlight, but they also have a greenhouse effect of their own; they trap the thermal energy emitted. So I’ve spent most of my career trying to understand the effects of clouds on the climate and how that might change if the climate warms.
And what’s the goal of this particular mission?
One of the fastest changing regions on Earth right now is the polar regions — I think a lot of people are aware of that. Normally, the polar regions are very cold — they reflect a lot of sunlight just because of the ice surface. But as the ice surface melts, the ocean is a lot darker than ice, and so [the poles] can actually absorb more of the solar radiation that’s coming in.
A lot of people say, “Well, okay, but that’s the Arctic. I don’t live there.” But the way the climate works is that in order to create an equilibrium between these really, really cold polar caps and the really, really warm tropics. It’s just like heating the end of a rod — the rod is going to transfer some of the heat from the hot end to the cold end to establish an equilibrium between them. The Earth does the same thing, but the way it does that is through our weather systems. So basically, how cold the polar region is versus the equator is what’s going to govern how severe our weather is in the mid-latitudes.
What we’re trying to do is make measurements of, basically, how that thermal energy is distributed. We just have a lack of understanding right now — or it’s more that the understanding comes from isolated, individual field projects, and what we really want to do is map out the whole Arctic and understand all of the different regions and how it’s changing.
How do you expect your findings to influence our climate models? Or how significantly do you expect them to affect the climate models?
This is quite unusual for a satellite project, we actually have climate modelers as part of our team. There’s the people that take, for example, the Greenland ice sheet, and they model things like the melting of the ice, how heat transports into the ice sheet, how the water once it melts percolates through the ice and then runs off at the bottom of the glacier, or even on top of the glacier. And then I have a general climate modeling group that basically uses climate models to project future climate.
There’s two ways that's going to happen. The first is we’ve developed a tool that allows us to kind of simulate what our satellite would see if it was flying in a climate model as opposed to around the real Earth — we can simulate exactly what the climate model is suggesting the satellite should see. And then of course, we’re making the real observations with the satellite. We can compare the two and evaluate, in today’s climate, how well is that climate model reproducing what the satellites see?
The other way is we’re going to generate models of how much heat comes off of various surfaces — ice surfaces, water surfaces, snow surfaces — and that information can be used to create a new module that goes right into the climate model and improves the way it represents the surface.
So what do these satellites look like and how do they work?
Our satellite is called a CubeSat. It’s not very big at all, maybe a foot wide, a foot-and-a-half or so long. There’s a little aperture, a little hole on the end of the satellite that lets the thermal energy from the Earth go in, and then the the rest of the satellite is basically just this big box that has a radio and a transmitter. In total, I think the whole thing weighs about 15 kilograms.
Because it's relatively small and relatively inexpensive, we're actually able to have two of those instead of just having one, and what that lets us do is put them into different orbits. At some point that will cross and see the same spot on the ground — let’s say somewhere in the center of Greenland — but up to eight or nine hours apart. Let’s say it melts in between, we’ll be able to understand how that melting process affected the heat that was emitted from the surface into the atmosphere.
How big of a deal do you think this is? Or how big of a deal do you think it could be?
There’s more than a couple of aspects to this. To really segue from the last question to this one, the reason [the satellites are] inexpensive, it’s not that they’re low-quality. It’s actually because they’re very uniform sizes and shapes. You can mass produce them. And so it’s that fact, coupled with the fact that we can now do real science on this small platform. We’ve been able to miniaturize the technology. If we can keep demonstrating that these missions are viable and producing realistic science data, this could be the future of the field.
Coming back to the polar climate, we absolutely know that the poles are warming at a very alarming rate. We know that the ice sheets are melting. We know that this has implications for the weather in the lower latitudes where we live, and for sea level. But when you try to predict that 100 years from now, there’s quite a range of different answers, from very catastrophic to still pretty bad. Depending on which of those answers is correct, it really dictates what we need to do today. How quickly do we need to adapt to a rising sea level, or to stronger storms or more frequent storms? After this mission, we will be able to improve the climate models in such a way that we’ll have a narrower range of possibilities.
The other thing that’s exciting is also just the unknown. There’s always new things that you learn by measuring something for the first time. We might learn something about the tropics, we might learn something about the upper atmosphere. There are some people in mountainous areas that are quite interested in the measurements — at the top of mountains, it’s actually quite similar in climate to the Arctic. So I’m also really excited about what happens when the science community in general explores that data for the first time.
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The Trump administration just did something surprising: It paved the way for a transmission line to a solar energy project.
On Friday, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Gen-Tie transmission line and associated facilities for the Sapphire Solar project, a solar farm sited on private lands in Riverside County, California, that will provide an estimated 117 megawatts to the Southern California Public Power Authority.
It is the first sign so far that some renewable energy requiring federal lands may be allowed to develop during the next four years, and is an about-face from the first weeks of Trump’s presidency.
BLM notably said the solar project’s transmission line will help “Unleash American Energy” (the bureau’s capitalization, not mine). And it said the move “aligns with” Trump’s executive order declaring a national energy emergency — which discussed only fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydropower — because it was “supporting the integrity of the electric grid while creating jobs and economic prosperity for Americans.”
“The Bureau of Land Management supports American Energy Dominance that prioritizes needs of American families and businesses,” BLM California State Director Joe Stout said in a statement provided via press release.
Another executive order Trump issued on his first day back in office paused solar and wind project permitting for at least 60 days, leading to a halt on government activities required to construct and operate renewable energy projects. It’s unclear whether these actions to move Sapphire’s transmission line through agency review means the federal permitting pipes are finally unstuck for the solar industry, or if this is an exception to the rule — especially because the pause Trump ordered has yet to hit the expiration date he set on the calendar.
For those keeping score, that’s three more than wanted to preserve them last year.
Those who drew hope from the letter 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson last August calling for the preservation of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act must be jubilant this morning. On Sunday, 21 House Republicans sent a similar letter to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith. Those with sharp eyes will have noticed: That’s three more people than signed the letter last time, indicating that this is a coalition with teeth.
As Heatmap reported in the aftermath of November’s election, four of the original signatories were out of a job as of January, meaning that the new letter features a total of seven new recruits. So who are they?
The new letter is different from the old one in a few key ways. First, it mentions neither the Inflation Reduction Act nor its slightly older cousin, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, by name. Instead, it emphasizes “the importance of prioritizing energy affordability for American families and keeping on our current path to energy dominance amid efforts to repeal or reform current energy tax credits.” The letter also advocates for an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy development that has long been popular among conservatives but has seemed to fall out of vogue under Trump 2.0.
Lastly, while the new letter repeats the previous version’s emphasis on policy stability for businesses, it adds a new plea on behalf of ratepayers. “As our conference works to make energy prices more affordable, tax reforms that would raise energy costs for hard working Americans would be contrary to this goal,” it reads. “Further, affordable and abundant energy will be critical as the President works to onshore domestic manufacturing, supply chains, and good paying jobs, particularly in Republican run states due to their business-friendly environments. Pro-energy growth policies will directly support these objectives.”
As my colleagues Robinson Meyer and Emily Pontecorvo have written, tariffs on Canadian fuel would raise energy prices in markets across the U.S. That includes some particularly swingy states, e.g. Michigan, which perhaps explains Rep. James’ seeming about-face.
Republicans’ House majority currently stands at all of four votes, so although 21 members might not be huge on the scale of the full House, they still represent a significant problem for Speaker Johnson.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Rep. James did not unseat Democrat Carl Marlinga in 2022 as the district had been newly created following the 2020 census.
Three companies are joining forces to add at least a gigawatt of new generation by 2029. The question is whether they can actually do it.
Two of the biggest electricity markets in the country — the 13-state PJM Interconnection, which spans the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, and ERCOT, which covers nearly all of Texas — want more natural gas. Both are projecting immense increases in electricity demand thanks to data centers and electrification. And both have had bouts of market weirdness and dysfunction, with ERCOT experiencing spiky prices and even blackouts during extreme weather and PJM making enormous payouts largely to gas and coal operators to lock in their “capacity,” i.e. their ability to provide power when most needed.
Now a trio of companies, including the independent power producer NRG, the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova, and a subsidiary of the construction firm Kiewit Corporation, are teaming up with a plan to bring gas-powered plants to PJM and ERCOT, the companies announced today.
The three companies said that the new joint venture “will work to advance four projects totaling over 5 gigawatts” of natural gas combined cycle plants to the two power markets, with over a gigawatt coming by 2029. The companies said that they could eventually build 10 to 15 gigawatts “and expand to other areas across the U.S.”
So far, PJM and Texas’ call for new gas has been more widely heard than answered. The power producer Calpine said last year that it would look into developing more gas in PJM, but actual investment announcements have been scarce, although at least one gas plant scheduled to close has said it would stay open.
So far, across the country, planned new additions to the grid are still overwhelmingly solar and battery storage, according to the Energy Information Administration, whose data shows some 63 gigawatts of planned capacity scheduled to be added this year, with more than half being solar and over 80% being storage.
Texas established a fund in 2023 to provide low-cost loans to new gas plants, but has had trouble finding viable projects. Engie pulled an 885 megawatt project from the program earlier this week, citing “equipment procurement constraints” and delays.
But PJM is working actively with a friendly administration in Washington to bring more natural gas to its grid. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently blessed a PJM plan to accelerate interconnection approvals for large generators — largely natural gas — so that it can bring them online more quickly.
But many developers and large power consumers are less than optimistic about the ability to bring new natural gas onto the grid at a pace that will keep up with demand growth, and are instead looking at “behind-the-meter” approaches to meet rising energy needs, especially from data centers. The asset manager Fortress said earlier this year that it had acquired 850 megawatts of generation capacity from APR Energy and formed a new company, fittingly named New APR Energy, which said this week that it was “deploying four mobile gas turbines providing 100MW+ of dedicated behind-the-meter power to a major U.S.-based AI hyperscaler.”
And all gas developers, whether they’re building on the grid or behind-the-meter, have to get their hands on turbines, which are in short supply. The NRG consortium called this out specifically, noting that it had secured the rights to two 7HA gas turbines by 2029. These kinds of announcements of agreements for specific turbines have become standard for companies showing their seriousness about gas development. When Chevron announced a joint venture with GE Vernova for co-located gas plants for data centers, it also noted that it had a reservation agreement for seven 7HA turbines. But until these turbines are made and installed, these announcements may all just be spin.