Lasers1nSpace

We ALL want to go diving with you. Is that a "pledge enough that it helps us, then buy your own ticket"?

I am Haviland Forrister, a physicist who works on taking atmospheric data on pollution. I created the GTS project "Lasers in Space" to help fund our observations of the planetary boundary layer, which contains most of the pollution that affects our every day lives. Our comparisons of satellite and ground lidar (laser radar) data will be used to help improve a global pollution forecasting model. Sadly, I couldn't actually bring my lasers to this website... (edit: info)

We're shooting a green laser up at the sky and collecting the light that comes back to us to determine how much pollution is up there. There's also a NASA satellite that flies overhead every 16 days that we're comparing our data to, so we know how well that NASA satellite sees down at Earth's surface. The NASA data is what will eventually (probably) be incorporated into a model for air pollution forecasting. It should be just as accurate in Atlanta as it is in England or Africa or China. I can't wait!