For 15 Years, GRACE Tracked Freshwater Movements Around the World

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    ID: 4627 Visualization

    GRACE 15-Year Groundwater Trends

    May 16th, 2018
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    Africa, No Colorbar || NASA scientists used GRACE data to identify regional trends of freshwater movement, and combined that information with data from other satellites, climate models and precipitation measurements to determine the causes of major regional trends in freshwater storage. In these visualizations, the colors represent liquid water equivalent thinckness, while the animated graph overlay represents the terrestrial water storage anomaly. || Africa, With Colorbar || Africa, No Graph, No Colorbar ||

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    ID: 4920 Visualization

    Earth System Observatory

    Aug. 4th, 2021
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    An animated graphic showing the areas of focus for NASA's Earth System Observatory. || NASA's Earth System Observatory is a set of Earth-focused missions designed to provide key information to guide efforts related to climate change, disaster mitigation, fighting forest fires, and improving real-time agricultural processes. With the Earth System Observatory, each satellite will be uniquely designed to complement the others, working in tandem to create a 3D, holistic view of Earth, from bedrock to atmosphere.The observatory follows recommendations from the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which lays out ambitious but critically necessary research and observation guidance.Areas of focus for the observatory include:Aerosols: Answering the critical question of how aerosols affect the global energy balance, a key source of uncertainty in predicting climate change.Cloud, Convection, and Precipitation: Tackling the largest sources of uncertainty in future projections of climate change, air quality forecasting, and prediction of severe weather.Mass Change: Providing drought assessment and forecasting, associated planning for water use for agriculture, as well as supporting natural hazard response.Surface Biology and Geology: Understanding climate changes that impact food and agriculture, habitation, and natural resources, by answering open questions about the fluxes of carbon, water, nutrients, and energy within and between ecosystems and the atmosphere, the ocean, and the Earth.Surface Deformation and Change: Quantifying models of sea-level and landscape change driven by climate change, hazard forecasts, and disaster impact assessments, including dynamics of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, glaciers, groundwater, and Earth’s interior. ||

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  • 
    ID: 12950 Produced Video

    A Map of Freshwater

    Aug. 13th, 2018
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Fifteen years of satellite data show changes in freshwater around the world. || Freshwater is found in lakes, rivers, soil, snow, groundwater and ice, and is one of the most essential of Earth's resources, for drinking water and agriculture. However, the distribution of freshwater around the planet is changing. Researchers used a pair of satellites called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, to track freshwater movement over the last fifteen years. The twin GRACE satellites were launched in 2002 as a joint mission between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The two satellites precisely measured the distance between themselves to detect changes in Earth's gravity field caused by movements of mass on the planet below, caused by shifts in water and ice. They found that some regions' water supplies are relatively stable, others experienced increases or decreases. Climate change has driven freshwater loss from the ice sheets at the poles, which has implications for sea level rise. Other areas saw groundwater depletions because of humans using water for irrigating crops or increases due to higher amounts of rainfall because of natural variability. Watch the video to learn more. ||

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