CLIMATE 365

Glaciers don’t make up nearly the volume of ice as do the ice...

Tue, 28 May 2013 11:26:00 -0400

Glaciers don’t make up nearly the volume of ice as do the ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland. But glaciers are melting faster, and a new study using NASA’s GRACE and ICESat satellites estimates that nearly a third of all sea level rise from 2003 to 2009 came from glaciers.

“Because the global glacier ice mass is relatively small in comparison with the huge ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, people tend to not worry about it,” said study co-author Tad Pfeffer, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “But it’s like a little bucket with a huge hole in the bottom: it may not last for very long, just a century or two, but while there’s ice in those glaciers, it’s a major contributor to sea level rise.”

Read more: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/glacier-sea-rise.html

sesamestreet: To boldly go where no furry, adorable blue...

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:25:20 -0400

sesamestreet:

To boldly go where no furry, adorable blue monster has gone before.

(Thanks, NASA!)

Super: GROVER.

Measuring how much it rains in your backyard can be done with a...

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:03:15 -0400

Measuring how much it rains in your backyard can be done with a plastic rain gauge. But if you were to add up all the official meteorological rain gauges throughout the world, they would cover the area of about two basketball courts. Scientists need more data, more frequently, over more of Earth’s surface. Enter the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, a joint effort between NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other international partners.

Most climate models predict that in a warming world, wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get drier. But scientists will need comprehensive rain observations going into the future to see what changes are taking place. The GPM mission will ultimately swarm Earth with nine satellites and be able to measure nearly all global rainfall every three hours. The GPM Core satellite, which will unify the measurements into one global dataset, is scheduled to launch in 2014.

In the late 1940s, English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle remarked,...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:40:39 -0400

In the late 1940s, English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle remarked, “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available…a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”

NASA’s study of Earth’s climate and atmosphere has long been a central focus of its science mission. But perhaps no single piece of research has had as much impact as the simple photographs of Earth taken by NASA’s early astronauts, who fulfilled Fred Hoyle’s prediction.

Happy Earth Day.

During and after World War II, the military spent a lot of time...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:35:18 -0400

During and after World War II, the military spent a lot of time studying the atmosphere for its effects on planes, rockets, missiles, and communication signals. In the process, they learned a lot about the behavior of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases. They never set out to research the “greenhouse effect,” but their understanding of those gases and their behavior paved the way for modern research on global warming.

For more about Earth’s atmosphere and climate, visit: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/

What's Up With Sea Level Rise?

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:26:53 -0400

What's Up With Sea Level Rise?:

Catch the archive of our Google+ Hangout on sea level rise, featuring Josh Willis (NASA JPL), Michael Watkins (JPL), Sophie Nowicki (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Virginia Burkett (USGS) and Andy Revkin (Pace University and Dot Earth/New York Times).

How much and how fast will sea level rise in the coming decades? What makes sea level rise hard to...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:52:00 -0400

How much and how fast will sea level rise in the coming decades? What makes sea level rise hard to predict? Who will be affected?

Join NASA experts and guests to discuss how sea level has risen an average of about seven inches around the globe since 1900, and has been accelerating in recent decades.

This NASA Google+ Hangout will take place on Tues., Apr. 2, at 1 p.m. EDT/10 a.m. PDT. Learn about the current state of sea level rise research, the questions yet to be answered and the potential impact on coastal communities.

The Hangout features:

* Josh Willis, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
* Sophie Nowicki, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
* Mike Watkins, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
* Virginia Burkett, U.S. Geological Survey
* Andrew Revkin, Pace University & New York Times Dot Earth blogger

Was Superstorm Sandy an expression of a “new normal” for our...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:46:05 -0400

Was Superstorm Sandy an expression of a “new normal” for our weather? Was it a storm pumped up by global warming?

It’s hard not to ask the questions, climate scientists say, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Historically, research on tornadoes, hurricanes, and other types of storms has focused on short-term forecasting, not on how storms are changing over time. But the study of storminess and climate has begun to mature, says Tony Del Genio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and a consensus is emerging: For several types of storms, global warming may prime the atmosphere to produce fewer but stronger storms.

Vegetation growth at Earth’s northern latitudes...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:03:00 -0400

Vegetation growth at Earth’s northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south.

The trend toward a greener North is evident in this visualization – based on land surface and satellite data – that shows how plant growth changed across the 10 million square miles (26 million square kilometers) of northern vegetated lands during the past 30 years.

Of the North’s total vegetated land area, 34 to 41 percent showed increases in plant growth (green and blue), 3 to 5 percent showed decreases in plant growth (orange and red), and 51 to 62 percent showed no changes (yellow).

The changes are driven by enhanced warming and longer growing seasons in the North, which have led to large patches of vigorously productive vegetation that now span a third of the northern landscape, or more than 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers). This landscape resembles what was found 250 to 430 miles (400 to 700 kilometers) to the south in 1982.

“It’s like Winnipeg, Manitoba, moving to Minneapolis-Saint Paul in only 30 years,” said co-author Compton Tucker of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in NASA story describing the research published March 10 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Visualization credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are changing...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:58:00 -0500

The ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are changing constantly, including key glaciers that move a lot of ice to the sea. If scientists don’t have a consistent picture of how and how fast this change is happening, it becomes much harder to understand.

NASA’s Operation IceBridge has been flying airborne research campaigns over Greenland and Antarctica since 2009, and will continue to do so until NASA launches its next ice-observing satellite, ICESat-2, in 2016.

IceBridge will embark on its annual Arctic campaign (over Greenland and Arctic sea ice) later this month.

There’s nothing quite like historical photos of glaciers...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:42:00 -0500

There’s nothing quite like historical photos of glaciers to show what a dynamic planet we live on. Alaska’s Muir Glacier, like many Alaskan glaciers, has retreated and thinned dramatically since the 19th century.

This particular pair of images shows the glacier’s continued retreat and thinning in the second half of the 20th century. From 1941 to 2004, the front of the glacier moved back about seven miles while its thickness decreased by more than 2,625 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

While historical photos like these show change over many decades, satellites are giving us a better understanding of how Earth’s ice cover has changed in the more recent past. The satellite era, beginning in the 1970s, has given us a picture of accelerating ice changes in places like Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica, where the loss of land-based ice is contributing to global sea level rise.

Forty-six gigatons of ice from Alaskan glaciers was lost on average each year from 2003 to 2010. That’s according to data from NASA’s GRACE satellite, as analyzed by a team of scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Their paper on global ice changes, as measured by GRACE, was published in Nature in February 2012.

Photo credits: Photographed by William O. Field on Aug. 13, 1941 (left) and by Bruce F. Molnia on Aug. 31, 2004 (right). From the Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology.

To understand how different elements of Earth’s climate...

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:13:00 -0500

To understand how different elements of Earth’s climate change over time, scientists must have a continuous record of data and observations, without large gaps. To maintain such a record of Earth’s changing ice cover, NASA’s Operation IceBridge puts multiple research aircraft in the field during two extended campaigns each year – one over Antarctica, one over Greenland – to gather data on glaciers, sea ice and ice sheets. The mission flies nearly identical patterns over the same targets year after year. The Greenland and Antarctica campaigns will continue until NASA’s 2016 launch of ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite), which follows the original ICESat mission that operated from 2003-2009, while IceBridge is the “bridge” between the two.

Few glaciers in the world draw more interest from glaciologists...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:22:00 -0500

Few glaciers in the world draw more interest from glaciologists than Pine Island Glacier (P.I.G.), in West Antarctica. The speed of its ice flow has been increasing exponentially in the past two decades. P.I.G. rests on bedrock that sits below sea level — making it more vulnerable to continued acceleration and increased contribution to global sea level rise.

P.I.G. also drains a massive section of the West Antarctic ice sheet that, alone, would add about 1 meter to global sea level.

Given all this, it should be no surprise that scientists — including those at NASA — have made P.I.G. a high-value science target. Why is it accelerating so rapidly? How much of its ice will move into the sea in future years; how much sea level rise will it cause? These are the questions scientists are trying to answer, using satellite data, observations from low-altitude research flights and even field campaigns to the bitter cold and remote region.

Ice flows like liquid water — just slower. A NASA-led team in...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:31:22 -0500

Ice flows like liquid water — just slower. A NASA-led team in 2011 created the first-ever complete map of Antarctica’s ice flow, revealing how the massive ice sheet moves ice from its interior to glaciers that feed the sea. The ice sheet is of particular interest to glaciologists because some of its glaciers are showing signs of rapid change in recent decades and are a growing source of concern for global sea level rise.

“This is like seeing a map of all the oceans’ currents for the first time. It’s a game changer for glaciology,” said Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine, lead author on the paper that presented the mapping results.

In this image, created from satellite radar data, the fastest ice flows are represented by blues, purples and hot pinks. The slowest flows are represented by yellows and pale oranges. The more active region of the continent is West Antarctica, where many glaciers are accelerating. East Antarctica is larger, less explored and more stable.

When we think about the hottest places on Earth, we tend to look...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:50:00 -0500

When we think about the hottest places on Earth, we tend to look to deserts — places that are dry, rocky, bare, and dark-colored. It turns out that such conditions appear in cities, too, which is why researchers are thinking about how to change the face of urban areas — or at least the rooftops — to reflect more and absorb less of the sun’s energy.

NASA’s next Earth-observing satellite, the Landsat Data...

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:54:00 -0500

NASA’s next Earth-observing satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), is tucked inside the payload faring of an Atlas V rocket in preparation for its launch into space from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on Feb. 11.

LDCM is the eighth satellite in the Landsat series, which began in 1972. It is the longest-running Earth-observing mission, collecting global land observations that are critical in many areas, such as energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture. NASA and the USGS jointly manage the Landsat Program.

After launch, LDCM will enter a polar orbit, circling Earth about 14 times daily from an altitude of 438 miles (705 kilometers), returning over each location on Earth every 16 days. After launch and the initial checkout phase, the USGS will take operational control of the satellite, and LDCM will be renamed Landsat 8. Data will be downlinked to three ground stations in Gilmore Creek, Alaska; Svalbard, Norway; and Sioux Falls, S.D. The data will be archived and distributed at no cost to users from the USGS’s Earth Resources Observation and Science Center in Sioux Falls.

Pilot Tom Ryan took this self-portrait (look closely in the...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:06:00 -0500

Pilot Tom Ryan took this self-portrait (look closely in the reflection on his visor) during a flight on NASA’s ER-2 in April 2011. The plane, which can operate at altitudes of 65,000 feet and higher, is a civilian version of the Air Force U2-S. It is kept at Dryden Flight Research Center in California and used in a variety of NASA’s Airborne Sciences field campaigns. This particular flight was to test a prototype of laser altimeter for the ICESat-2 mission, which will take key measurements of ice sheet elevation and changes. Credit: NASA/Tom Ryan

NASA’s Airborne Sciences program employs ER-2 aircraft — the...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 12:38:00 -0500

NASA’s Airborne Sciences program employs ER-2 aircraft — the civilian version of the Air Force U2-S — to carry out its wide-ranging study of different Earth systems. The photo seen here is a self-portrait by pilot Tom Ryan, taken during a 2011 flight to test a laser altimeter prototype for NASA’s ICESat-2 mission. The aircraft typically operates at an altitude of around 65,000 feet.

Right now, three polarimeter instruments are being flown on an ER-2 as part of the Polarimeter Definition Experiment (PODEX), which is paving the way for the future Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem (ACE) satellite mission.

Shake shake shake, shake your annual global temperature...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:02:02 -0500

Shake shake shake, shake your annual global temperature variations. While NASA’s analysis of average global temperatures shows changes from year to year, the long-term trend still shows rising global temperatures, compared to a baseline average from 1951-1980.

In fact the last year that experienced an average global temperature cooler than the 1951-1980 average was 1976, when the U.S. was marking its bicentennial and K.C. and the Sunshine Band were at the top of the charts.

Creative commons disco ball photo courtesy of marfis75 on flickr.

Each year, four international science institutions compile...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:04:00 -0500

Each year, four international science institutions compile temperature data from thousands of stations around the world and make independent judgments about whether the year was warmer or cooler than average. “The official records vary slightly because of subtle differences in the way we analyze the data,” said Reto Ruedy, climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “But they also agree extraordinarily well.”

All four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades. All show the last decade has been the warmest on record.

Note: An updated version of this graph was posted on 1/25.