How NASA Decodes the Secrets of the Arctic

This 3D volumetric visualization shows the emission and transport of atmospheric methane over Canada and Alaska in September 2018 with the date and colorbar. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timescale. Concentrations of methane have increased by more than 150% since industrial activities and intensive agriculture began. After carbon dioxide, methane is responsible for about 23% of climate change in the twentieth century. Methane is produced under conditions where little to no oxygen is available. About 30% of methane emissions are produced by wetlands, including ponds, lakes and rivers. Another 20% is produced by agriculture, due to a combination of livestock, waste management and rice cultivation. Activities related to oil, gas, and coal extraction release an additional 30%. The remainder of methane emissions come from minor sources such as wildfire, biomass burning, permafrost, termites, dams, and the ocean. Scientists around the world are working to better understand the budget of methane with the ultimate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving prediction of environmental change. For additional information, see the Global Methane Budget.The NASA SVS visualization presented here shows the complex patterns of methane emissions produced over Canada and Alaska during the summer of 2018. The visualization was created using output from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, GMAO, GEOS modeling system, developed and maintained by scientists at NASA. Wetland emissions were estimated by the LPJ-wsl model, which simulates the temperature and moisture dependent methane emission processes using a variety of satellite data to determine what parts of the globe are covered by wetlands. Other methane emission sources come from inventories of human activity. The height of Earth’s atmosphere and topography have been vertically exaggerated and appear approximately 50-times higher than normal in order to show the complexity of the atmospheric flow.Emissions reflect a mix of agricultural and industrial activities. Emissions are transported through the atmosphere as weather systems move and mix methane around the globe. In the atmosphere, methane is eventually removed by reactive gases that convert it to carbon dioxide. Understanding the three-dimensional distribution of methane is important for NASA scientists planning observations that sample the atmosphere. Aircraft, like those launched during NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABOVE) sample the atmosphere along very specific flight lines, providing additional details about the processes controlling methane emissions at high latitudes. Atmospheric models help place these measurements in context so that scientists can refine estimates of sources and sinks, understand the processes controlling them and reduce uncertainty in future projections of carbon-climate feedbacks. This 3D volumetric visualization shows the emission and transport of atmospheric methane over Canada and Alaska in September 2018 without the date and colorbar. The date and colorbar with transparency

Animal movement tracking across the arctic on top of seasonal natural phenomena like changing vegetation, snow (white), and sea ice (light purple).This video is also available on our YouTube channel. The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a new and growing collection of studies describing movements of animals in and near the Arctic. The AAMA includes millions of locations of thousands of animals over more than three decades, recorded by hundreds of scientists and institutions. By compiling these data, the AAMA supports public data discovery, preserves fundamental baseline data for the future, and facilitates efficient, collaborative data analysis. We have used the AAMA to document climatic influences on the migration phenology of golden eagles, geographic differences in the adaptive response of caribou reproductive phenology to climate change, species-specific changes in terrestrial mammal movement rates in response to increasing temperature, and the utility of animal-borne sensors as proxies for ambient air temperature. The AAMA is a living archive that can be used to uncover other such changes, investigate their causes and consequences, and recognize larger ecosystem changes taking place in the Arctic. These visualizations show AAMA animal location data. Some of the visualizations collpase the years down as if all of the data were from the same year; others show the data with the years passing. Several different groupings of animals are shown: marine mammals, raptors, seabirds, shorebirds, terrestrial mammals, and waterbirds. Snow and sea ice are also shown for context as they correlate to animal movements.Citation: Ecological insights from three decades of animal movement tracking across a changing Arctic. S.C. Davidson, et al. Science 06 Nov 2020: Vol. 370, Issue 6517, pp. 712-715 DOI: 10.1126/science.abb7080Data citation: The Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) is a collection of studies that contain animal movement and other animal-borne sensor data from the Arctic and Subarctic, owned by hundreds of participating experts and organizations. As of November 2020, this collection includes 214 studies that contain over 43 million locations of over 12,000 animals recorded from 1988 to the present. Initial development of the AAMA was funded by NASA only the month and day are used to determine which points are shown). 30 days of data are shown every frame Locations of raptors migrating from Canada and Alaska in 1999. In this visualization, about 84% are Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), 14% are Bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and 2% are Osprey (Pandion haliaetus). Animal locations from a single grey wolf from 10 Jan 2014 to 17 Feb 2014 with a Landsat-8 data tile used for the high resolution closeup Animal locations through the years showing North and South America. 60 days worth of data are shown every frame Colors for each animal grouping: red=marine mammals, green=raptors, purple=seabirds, orange=shorebirds, yellow=terrestrial mammals, brown=waterbirds Global temperature anomaly average from 2015-2019 based on GISS Surface Temperature Analysis +/- 2 degrees celcius (blues are lower than normal, reds are higher than normal). The color bar is the same one that was used here. Colorbar for the global temperature anomaly. Blue is colder than the average temperature for that area, and red is warmer than the average temperature.

This first 3D volumetric visualization focuses on several continents showing the emission and transport of atmospheric methane around the globe between January 1, 2017 and November 30, 2018. This video is also available on our YouTube channel. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat 28 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 100-year timescale. Concentrations of methane have increased by more than 150% since industrial activities and intensive agriculture began. After carbon dioxide, methane is responsible for about 20% of climate change in the twentieth century. Methane is produced under conditions where little to no oxygen is available. About 30% of methane emissions are produced by wetlands, including ponds, lakes and rivers. Another 20% is produced by agriculture, due to a combination of livestock, waste management and rice cultivation. Activities related to oil, gas, and coal extraction release an additional 30%. The remainder of methane emissions come from minor sources such as wildfire, biomass burning, permafrost, termites, dams, and the ocean. Scientists around the world are working to better understand the budget of methane with the ultimate goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving prediction of environmental change. For additional information, see the Global Methane Budget.The NASA SVS visualization presented here shows the complex patterns of methane emissions produced around the globe and throughout the year from the different sources described above. The visualization was created using output from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, GMAO, GEOS modeling system, developed and maintained by scientists at NASA. Wetland emissions were estimated by the LPJ-wsl model, which simulates the temperature and moisture dependent methane emission processes using a variety of satellite data to determine what parts of the globe are covered by wetlands. Other methane emission sources come from inventories of human activity. The height of Earth’s atmosphere and topography have been vertically exaggerated and appear approximately 50-times higher than normal in order to show the complexity of the atmospheric flow. As the visualization progresses, outflow from different source regions is highlighted. For example, high methane concentrations over South America are driven by wetland emissions while over Asia, emissions reflect a mix of agricultural and industrial activities. Emissions are transported through the atmosphere as weather systems move and mix methane around the globe. In the atmosphere, methane is eventually removed by reactive gases that convert it to carbon dioxide. Understanding the three-dimensional distribution of methane is important for NASA scientists planning observations that sample the atmosphere in very different ways. Satellites like GeoCarb, a planned geostationary mission to observe both carbon dioxide and methane, look down from space and will estimate the total number of methane molecules in a column of air. Aircraft, like those launched during NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABOVE) sample the atmosphere along very specific flight lines, providing additional details about the processes controlling methane emissions at high latitudes. Atmospheric models help place these different types of measurements in context so that scientists can refine estimates of sources and sinks, understand the processes controlling them and reduce uncertainty in future projections of carbon-climate feedbacks. This second 3D volumetric visualization shows a global view of the methane emission and transport between December 1, 2017 and November 30, 2018. This visualizaion of the rotating global view is designed to be played in a continuous loop.This video is also available on our YouTube channel. This version of the first visualization shows the Earth and methane only. The date, colorbar and exaggeration are not displayed. This version of the second visualization shows the Earth and methane only. The date, colorbar and exaggeration are not displayed. A still image of the global atmospheric methane on December 25, 2017. This layer of the first visualization includes the date, colorbar and exaggeration with transparency. This layer of the second visualization includes the date, colorbar and exaggeration with transparency.

Music: Very Fast Swing by Claude Salmieri and Fabien Colella Complete transcript available. NASA Explorers is a digital series that takes viewers inside the agency for a close-up look at the scientists, engineers, pioneers by Samuel John McAvoyComplete transcript available. Bonus Episode: Cryo KidsNASA Explorers come in all ages! In this week’s bonus episode, we headed back to Alaska to check in with some of our tiniest Explorers. They’re following in the scientists’ footsteps, working with NASA’s GLOBE program to measure when and where snow and ice are freezing. Plus, stick around for a thank you message from our scientists to the young Explorers collecting their data.

The Arctic Boreal and Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) covers 2.5 million square miles of tundra, forests, permafrost and lakes in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. ABoVE scientists are using satellites and aircraft to study this formidable terrain as it changes in a warming climate. Remote sensing by itself is not enough to understand the whole picture, so teams of researchers will go out into the field to gather data. With support from NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program, ABoVE researchers investigate questions about the role of climate in wildfires, thawing permafrost, wildlife migration habits, insect outbreaks and more. Bubbles, bubbles, and more bubbles, in a steady stream. Many lakes in the boreal regions of Alaska are emitting methane, the product of decomposing organic matter left over from the Ice Age. Thawing permafrost has caused areas of land to slump and fill up with water, creating these bodies of water called thermokarst lakes. The water then exacerbates the thawing, expanding the size of the lake and producing even more methane. In the early cold season, ice covers the lakes and traps methane in large pockets just beneath the surface. University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists working as part of NASA’s Arctic boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) find and measure the methane gas in these pockets seep-by-seep and lake-by-lake. ABoVE combines precise methane measurements from individual lakes with satellite data that can monitor lakes like these across the Arctic, to accurately model how much methane sub-lake seeps are adding to the atmosphere. For more on the bubbling lakes: https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/2016/08/23/mapping-methane-in-a-bubbling-arctic-lake/Complete transcript available. ABoVE scientist Chip Miller provides a brief introduction to the CARVE tower, which monitors the atmosphere all year round. For more on the CARVE tower: https://blogs.nasa.gov/earthexpeditions/2016/07/14/tower-power-measuring-carbon-in-the-last-frontier/Complete transcript available.