Airborne research and observations continue to be a part of a robust and resilient Earth Science Division program as defined in NASA’s decadal survey. As part of this, planning of the suborbital research flights involves much thought, time and effort in order to translate scientific sampling objectives to aircraft waypoints. We present the planning process and tools that have been used in 2 field campaigns operated by NASA in 2024; ARCSIX (Arctic Radiation-Cloud-Aerosol-Surface Interaction Experiment) and PACE-PAX (The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment). Combined these campaigns have different guiding principles, regions, and 5 aircraft. To enable more efficient science operations using distributed observations, we developed an efficient tool for flight planning, which achieved numerous science objectives.

Decreased water quality in coastal environments due to land alterations by human activities has caused stressed and degraded coral reefs worldwide. The consequences of reduced water quality are not limited to coral reefs but also affect the quality of people’s lives by increasing the incidence of diseases, so areas highly impacted have been prioritized for management. The Guánica Bay Watershed Management Plan was developed to reduce the non-point sources of pollution that arrive at the bay and to protect adjacent coral reefs, however, 15 years have passed since its creation, and management actions have not been evaluated. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the management actions implemented in the Guánica Bay watershed. We described temporal trends (2002–2008 and 2016–2022) of remotely sensed diffuse attenuation coefficient at 490 nm (Kd490), a water clarity indicator, in one managed (Guánica Bay) and three non-managed (Guayanilla Bay, Descalabrado River, and Guanajibo River) estuaries in south and southwest Puerto Rico. This was achieved by integrating ocean-color satellite imagery from MERIS-Envisat and OLCI-Sentinel-3 sensors sampled using a beyond-Before-After-Control-Impact (beyond-BACI) approach. The analysis for the beyond-BACI found significant differences between periods (before and after) but the changes were unique to each location within the estuaries. The southern estuaries showed similar temporal trends, all having a peak in 2018 related to the passage of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and a trough in 2020 related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Kd490 did not decrease in Guánica after implementing management actions, suggesting that the impact of the hurricanes on water clarity probably outweighed the efforts made in the watershed to improve water quality. Further analysis should be done as new data is available and after the implementation of the last management actions suggested in the plan.

Tipping elements are critical components of the Earth system. These are small perturbations that can cause large, potentially cascading, and irreversible impacts on the climate system, including the biosphere and human societies. However, our current knowledge of the scale and feedbacks of Earth system components that might exhibit tipping behavior is still limited. Advancing our understanding requires large ensembles of Earth System Model (ESM) simulations. In the Tipping Point Model Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP), a “ramp up – stabilization – ramp down” scenario is suggested. This approach involves adapting either CO2 emissions or CO2 concentrations to drive the global mean surface temperature (GMST) to increase towards a certain prescribed global warming level (GWL), keeping it stable at the GWL for a certain period, and then allowing the temperature to decrease again.

Many iron meteorites sample the metallic cores of planetesimals, providing a unique opportunity to study early Solar System planetary processes. Modeling the chemical evolution during crystallization of these iron meteorite groups provides evidence that both S and P were present as light elements in planetesimal cores. As fractional crystallization of these cores proceeded, the concentrations of both S and P in the residual metallic liquid in the core increased, and eventually, liquid immiscibility in the Fe-Ni-S-P system would be expected to be encountered in many cases. For example, the IIAB and IIG irons may be related in this way. Considerable previous experimental work has determined element partitioning behaviors between solid metal and liquid metal as a function of the S and P concentrations of the metallic liquid, but few experimental studies have examined trace element partitioning behavior after the onset of liquid immiscibility. In this work, we present new experimental results that determine element partitioning behavior between two coexisting immiscible metallic liquids in the Fe-Ni-S-P system, as may be experienced during the later stages of the evolution of planetesimal cores.