23 April 2004

Doing Science in Brazil, Part 1: Arrival in Cuiaba

Forrest M. Mims III

This is the first of a series about research for NASA in Brazil's Amazon basin.

In 1991 my homemade instruments that measure the ozone layer found a small but significant calibration drift in NASA's ozone satellite. This finding was published in Nature, the prestigious English science journal, where it caused a bit of a stir at NASA (F. M. Mims III, Satellite Monitoring Error, Nature 361, 505, 1993).

A few years later I was asked to give a talk about my ozone research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) at Greenbelt, Maryland. The talk was entitled, "Doing Earth Science on a Shoestring Budget."

While at GSFC, I met several NASA scientists who expressed interest in my miniature instruments. In 1995, one of those scientists asked me to take my instruments to Brazil during SCAR-B, a major international research expedition. The goal was to study the effects of the smoke that covers much of that beautiful country during burning season.

Preparing for Brazil

I was invited since NASA's Nimbus-7 ozone satellite had failed and NASA had no portable instruments for measuring the ozone layer.
Although my assignment was to study how severe air pollution causes ozone to increase, I decided to take many other instruments. But this made it difficult to carry clothing and supplies.

About this time I was invited to give a lecture at Colorado Christian University. One of the professors said a student, Damian Kilday, wanted to accompany me to Brazil. Damian agreed to help carry my equipment and make measurements, so I gladly accepted his offer.

The trip required considerable preparation. NASA had to arrange for formal invitations from a Brazilian scientist, and we had to apply for special scientific visas. Getting all the instruments ready was especially time consuming.

Only a few weeks before the big trip, an official called to say that the Brazilian military had cancelled the research expedition. I was surprised when he suggested that I go to Brazil anyway. He said I should pose as a tourist and be as inconspicuous as possible while making measurements. I wondered what he would say to the authorities from the comfort of his office while I was vacationing in a Brazilian jail. Then only days before the canceled departure date for the big expedition, Brazil's military changed its mind. The expedition was on again, and Damian and I were off to Brazil.

Our flight left Texas at dusk, and we crossed the Equator around 3:00 AM. As we flew further south, we noticed something strange out the window well before sunrise. Flickering strands of orange, red and yellow formed eerie outlines in the rain forest far below. They were the fires whose smoke we would soon be measuring–-and breathing.

Arriving in Sao Paulo

A few hours after sunrise, the huge city of Sao Paulo lay outside our window. The smoke from the burning rain forest was replaced by the blackest layer of industrial and automobile pollution that I've ever seen. Surprisingly, the sky over the big airport was relatively clear.

When we arrived at the big Sao Paulo airport, Damian and I were apprehensive about making it through customs with all my equipment. Just as we reached the checkpoint, two men raced ahead of us. The customs inspectors rewarded their effort by stopping them while waving us through.

The Sao Paulo airport has a bad reputation for baggage theft, so we carefully guarded our stuff. We learned that our paranoia was misplaced when we visited an airport bank to exchange some money. The woman on the other side of the thick glass window slipped one of my $100 bills under the counter before she counted the money!

When she announced that the $700 I gave her had shrunk to only $600, I stared back in disbelief. That worked better than trying to use the four Portuguese words Damian and his phrase book had taught me on the airplane (please, yes, thank you and no ice). When I pretended to look aside for a moment, she retrieved the purloined bill and recounted the money.

Within a few hours, Damian and I were napping aboard the 737 that was taking us to Cuiaba in western Brazil. I awoke as an attendant handed me a Coke. Looking out the window I saw nothing but smoke. (To be continued.)

Forrest M. Mims III and his science are featured online at http://www.forrestmims.org/.

This feature was originally published in Forrest Mims's weekly science column in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, Seguin, Texas. The column is written for a general audience.