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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Julia Musto

The terrifying reason NASA is flying planes into raging wildfires

  • NASA plans to conduct flight missions this summer to study dangerous wildfire-generated storms, aiming to improve forecasting and potentially save lives.
  • The agency will fly ER-2 and WB-57 planes into pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which are known to produce choking smoke, thousands of lightning strikes, and firenadoes.
  • The experiment, named "INSPYRE" and led by the Naval Research Laboratory, will involve at least two 6-8-week flight missions over the western U.S. or Canada.
  • These missions will utilize infrared wildfire trackers on planes and deploy ground-based radar and remote sensing technology to observe cloud formation.
  • The research is crucial as human-caused climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of wildfires, making current predictions for these complex cloud formations inadequate.

IN FULL

NASA is flying planes into wildfires to try and figure out how they make their own thunderstorms

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