Spring 2021 Meeting of the APS Ohio-Region Section
Volume 66, Number 3
Friday–Saturday, April 9–10, 2021;
Virtual Meeting Hosted by John Carroll University, Cleveland Heights, OH; Time Zone: Eastern Daylight Time, USA
Session A03: Plenary Talk I
2:00 PM–3:00 PM,
Friday, April 9, 2021
Chair: Danielle Kara, John Carroll University
Abstract: A03.00001 : Monitoring the Earth's Evolving Climate from Space.*
2:00 PM–3:00 PM
Preview Abstract
Author:
David Crisp
(Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)
Since the 1960s, NASA has deployed a growing fleet of satellites to study
the Earth. This fleet now includes 17 platforms carrying dozens of sensors
that measure surface and atmospheric temperatures, humidity, solar and
thermal radiation, aerosols, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture and water
storage, ice cover and thickness, sea level, ocean color, land cover,
biological productivity, ozone and other reactive gases, and long-lived
greenhouse gases. As the NASA fleet has grown and its capabilities
increased, it has documented an accelerating series of changes in our
environment. It has revealed rising temperatures, showing that we are living
in the warmest years of the warmest decade on record. These increasing
temperatures have been accompanied by the increasing incidence, intensity
and area of wildfires. Higher temperatures have also contributed to record
losses in sea ice as well as the retreat of glaciers and ice sheets on land,
which is driving increasing rates of sea level rise. As the air warms, it
can hold more water, contributing to more record-setting hurricanes,
typhoons and mid-latitude supercell storms and derechos. Land surface
measurements by NASA and its partners in Japan and Europe have also recorded
losses in the acreage and productivity of tropical forests that were offset
by larger increases in the forest productivity at higher latitudes, thought
to be associated with higher temperatures and longer growing seasons.
Climate models show that the primary driver of these changes is the buildup
of carbon dioxide (CO$_{\mathrm{2}})$, methane (CH$_{\mathrm{4}})$ and other
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Over the past decade, fossil fuel
combustion and other human activities have added about 35 billion tons of
carbon dioxide and about 366 million tons of methane to the atmosphere each
year. NASA and its partners in Japan and Europe are now monitoring these
gases with the precision, accuracy, resolution, and coverage needed to
quantify the sources that emit them into the atmosphere and the natural
processes that remove them. Here, we will review these observations and
summarize some recent discoveries made by this fleet of satellites.
*Monitoring the Earth's Evolving Climate from Space