Jane Burston wants to solve the problems associated with climate change. She uses the Thames barrier as the example of rapidly changing climate issues. The gate was built in 1982 and in its first decade was lifted ten times. In the last decade, however, the barrier has been lifted more than eighty times. Her Solve for X talk, Understanding Climate Change with in-orbit satellite calibration, shows her methods to obtain better data to aid in making better decisions.
As extreme weather events become more frequent and more intense Burston says that we need better ways to predict weather patterns. She says that climate modeling helps to give us predictive data but the answers contain heavy uncertainties and are not always correct.
https://www.solveforx.com/moonshot/5695414665740288
Working at the National Physical Laboratory Burston has founded the Centre for Carbon Measurement, and focuses on three areas. Improving climate data, understanding carbon trading and pricing, and low carbon technologies.
Burston says that the largest problem with data is calibration. Her team has developed several tools to help calibration in satellite data, including the Cryogenic Solar Absolute Radiometer (CSAR). She describes the CSAR as a very cold black cavity that heats up when you shine light into it.
Instruments are calibrated on the ground in a lab setting but after launch and during orbit the readings can drift. Over ten months instruments can fall out of true readings by as much as thirty percent - the example in the talk was a VIIRS sensor.
Calibration can be done once the satellite is in orbit using a few different methods. Mapping the ground and then checking the satellite readings for the piece of land can show discrepancies in data. Calibrating instruments while they are in orbit is done using a lamp shined into the imager and adjusting based on how much light makes it way into the imager vs the known light quantities from the lamp. Each of these methods have their limits.
Jane and her team have made breakthroughs working with Dr. Nigel Cox and his Satellite Direct organization. Using carbon fibers, additional lasers as sources of light, and the CSAR much more accurate data can be obtained. Less than 0.002% of the light inside CSAR can escape and the readings will continue to be accurate even if the readings erode by a factor of one hundred.
Burston is a great engaging speaker and her methods hope to improve climate data by a factor of ten. The estimate is that this could save between $5 and 30 trillion dollars as a result of better decisions made from more accurate data.