Climate Change - NASA Science

NASA Earth Science and Climate Change Overview

• Core Mission: NASA utilizes over 20 Earth-orbiting satellites and extensive research programs to monitor oceans, land, ice, atmosphere, and life to understand how these systems interact.
• Primary Cause of Warming: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate, primarily driven by human activity since the mid-20th century.
• The Greenhouse Effect: Global warming is attributed to the human expansion of the greenhouse effect, specifically the increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.
• Current Impacts: Observed effects include the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, rising sea levels, more intense heat waves, and increased wildland fire activity.
• Future Outlook: Climate change impacts are considered irreversible for the current generation and are expected to worsen as long as greenhouse gas emissions continue.
• Key NASA Resources & Initiatives:
  • Sea Level Change Team: Established in 2014 to study regional sea-level changes and translate data into actionable information.
  • NCCS (NASA Center for Climate Simulation): Provides high-performance computing for weather and climate prediction.
  • GISTEMP: A global temperature record maintained by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies using meteorological, ship, and buoy data.
  • NEX (NASA Earth Exchange): A platform for analyzing massive, petabyte-scale Earth system datasets using supercomputing.
  • GMAO (Global Modeling and Assimilation Office): Develops the GEOS family of models to support Earth science missions and research.