 They're best known for providing built-by views of sporting events, but today one of the good year airships is also getting scientists the perspective they need to study an important climate-related problem. Abort the Brent Columbia off the coast of Long Beach, California. Dr. Denise Higan from NASA's Jet Promotion Laboratory works with a sophisticated instrument called an infrared radiometer. The device measures ocean surface temperatures. Presently weather satellites equipped with similar sensors are used to measure heat radiated by the sea, but satellites don't detect these temperature signals until they have traveled through the Earth's atmosphere. Dr. Higan believes that water vapor in the air close to the ocean surface distorts these satellite readings. A better understanding of this problem will improve the prediction of climate change and global weather. The radiometer being used in the study, shown here at the NASA lab, being prepared for a blimp flight, is essentially a three-foot-tall infrared telescope. The device can detect a temperature change as small as two-thousandths of a degree. Dr. Higan explained. If you took a block of ice and threw it into your standard backyard-sized swimming pool and distributed the ice uniformly, it would cause a change in temperature of two-thousandths of a degree, and that's the precision of our instrument. A blimp is the ideal way to fly the radiometer because it moves slowly, can fly close to the surface, and is relatively vibration-free. During a measurement flight, a gold-plated mirror suspended outside the airship reflects the temperature signals into the instrument. The readings are taken at a range of altitudes, from two-hundred to three-thousand feet. While Dr. Higan works aboard the airship, other members of her team take ocean temperature readings from a boat below. A highly instrumented boy is departing an area where the blimp will ascend. These measurements are later compared with those gathered by the airborne radiometer. The final step is relating this information to that being transmitted back to Earth by the weather satellites. This is done at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Ohio, California. Although she's just in the early stages of her investigation, Dr. Higan's expectations are high. If we can improve our understanding of the mechanism that controls the behavior of water vapor and how it absorbs radiation at the surface, then I think we will have made our finest contribution. NASA's infrared radiometer studies, striving for greater accuracy in the way we look at our climate.