{ "count": 49, "next": null, "previous": null, "results": [ { "id": 4395, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4395/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-23T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "Q&A with NASA Visualizer, Lori Perkins", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.How did you discover your passion for Earth Science?I have loved Earth Science since I was a little girl. I was the only little girl in my class that loved changing cloud patterns, thunderstorms, and lightning.What do you enjoy most about what you do?I love that my job gives me the opportunity to explain all sorts of interesting science results and phenomenon.What inspired you to work in this field?The Star Wars movies and NASA's Apollo Program!Where do you work and do you remember what it was like on your first day of work?Now, I work at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. I started at NASA working as a student writing fortran code in a data processing facility that aimed to provide error-free telemetry transmissions from spacecraft to the ground. On my first day, I remember all of my coworkers speaking in acronyms. I didn’t know what the acronyms meant.What are some of the most important lessons you have learned in your life?Don't be afraid to ask questions and don't be afraid to throw out an idea that might seem crazy.What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?I worked on a piece that won the National Science Foundation's Visualization of the Year. It is a wonderful piece that explains the important connection between the Sun and our Earth. || ", "hits": 18 }, { "id": 4394, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4394/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-21T15:00:00-04:00", "title": "Q&A with RaD-X Project Scientist, Erica Alston", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.You are the Project Scientist and Education and Public Outreach (EPO) lead for the Rad-X Project. What is Rad-X, why is it important, and what is the EPO and project scientist's role?NASA's Radiation Dosimetry Experiment, or RaD-X, is a low-cost, high-altitude balloon project. Its mission is to help us understand and quantify cosmic ray exposure at the top of atmosphere. That's the zone where commercial airlines fly. This is important because these cosmic rays are a primary source of ionizing radiation in the atmosphere and increase the risk of cancer and other health impacts. A pilot absorbs as much radiation as a worker in a nuclear power plant, yet the dose of radiation they receive during a cosmic storm or during the span of their career is not quantified or documented.The RaD-X payload consists of four radiation sensors that are used to measure incoming radiation. The RaD-X payload was launched on September 25, 2015 via a high-altitude research balloon. This supplements NASA's Nowcast of Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation for Aviation Safety (NAIRAS) model, which helps us make informed decisions about radiation exposure safety for flight crews, the general public, and commercial space operations. RaD-X also supported Cubes in Space on their inaugural balloon flight, which carried various science projects from schools across the U.S. Cubes in Space is a global design contest in which teams of secondary school students from around the world develop unique science experiments for launch into the upper atmosphere. During the 24-hour mission, the RaD-X payload and Cubes in Space experienced altitudes above 100,000 ft. during the day and above 60,000 ft. during the night. On RaD-X, I had dual roles. First as the Project Scientist it was my job to serve as an interface between the scientists and engineers. Essentially, to help them speak the same language and communicate effectively. I was also the EPO lead. This included coordinating school visits, developing fact sheets, and interfacing with NASA Langley Research Center’s public affairs and communications.How do you use Earth visualizations? Does it have applications to the Rad-X project?Using data from the NAIRAS model, we create visualizations of predicted radiation exposure at multiple altitudes. These show exposure rates at aircraft levels and a vertical profile on global exposure rates. Now that we have successfully launched the Rad-X mission, we have started to analyze real data. During the launch we monitored (in real-time) how the measurements compared with the model predicted values from NAIRAS. Creating visualizations in real-time made the comparisons easier to interpret. || ", "hits": 12 }, { "id": 4366, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4366/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-16T16:00:00-04:00", "title": "The Chesapeake Bay in 661 Million Pixels", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.Imagine you're flying 438 miles above the Earth taking pictures and collecting information of everything below. What do you see? Now imagine you’ve been doing this non-stop for over 40 years. Do you notice any change? A satellite series named Landsat has been doing exactly that. As a NASA scientist, I've been using Landsat-8 (the current satellite) data for a long time. Yet it's still amazing to create images of salt reflecting a brilliant white in a natural color scene, or seeing it turn a beautiful cyan using an infrared perspective. With the right tools I can discern patterns in the salt or make visible the phytoplankton dancing on the blue ocean. I've observed cities grow, forests recover from fire, islands form, and more. Our world is constantly changing.When sunlight hits the Earth's surface, it is absorbed, reflected, or scattered, resulting in different wavelengths of light leaving the Earth. Landsat-8 measures the visible and infrared wavelengths in 30-meter pixels and in order to \"see\" the image, we assign particular colors to different wavelengths. || ", "hits": 31 }, { "id": 4387, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4387/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-13T17:00:00-04:00", "title": "El Niño: Disrupting the Marine Food Web", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.In case you haven’t heard, El Niño is starting to make headlines this year. Often nicknamed \"the bad boy of weather,\" who is this guy?A long time ago, fishermen off the west coast of South America — one of the world's most productive fisheries — noticed that some years the fish disappeared. This was especially noticeable around Christmas time — giving it the name El Niño, which means Christ child in Spanish. Today we know why El Niño happens — but knowing when it will happen is still a challenge. Normally, winds blow from east to west along the equator, pushing surface water westward. As the water moves away from the east, nutrient-rich deeper ocean water rises to fill the void (called upwelling.) When nutrients rise into sunlight, they cause blooms of tiny plants called phytoplankton. These plants feed the entire marine food web from small fish such as sardines to bigger fish, sea birds, and marine mammals. When an El Niño develops, the normal east-to-west winds die and warm surface water from the west Pacific moves eastward. This stops the upwelling in the east. Without the supply of deeper, nutrient-rich water, less phytoplankton bloom and the fisheries collapse. From satellites in space we see how these changes impact the ocean’s color. Normally, the ocean looks more green along the equator (image below, left.) During El Niño, the ocean looks more blue and less green because there is less plant life (images below, right.) While this color change is subtle to our eyes, it means life or death for the species that depend upon plankton for food. Some animals starve (e.g. sea lions, marine iguanas, Galapagos penguins) while others move away to look for food elsewhere. || ", "hits": 38 }, { "id": 4385, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4385/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-09T17:00:00-04:00", "title": "Zooming In: Remote Sensing the Earth", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.Observing something without coming in contact with it is called remote sensing. Think about that. Every living animal uses remote sensing. A spider keeps its eight eyes fixed on a fly, watches its movements. A dolphin sends out sounds to locate a school of fish. A tiger uses its Jacobson's organ to smell a mate. Humans listen to cicadas' loud noises coming from the trees. These are all examples of remote sensing. And, more than likely, all of these animals are analyzing the data they are receiving. I used these particular examples to show that there are different methods of receiving this data. The spider uses sight. The dolphin uses echolocation. The tiger uses smell. The human uses sound. I remember the first time I flew in an airplane. I was about 12 years old and was lucky enough to get a window seat. It was amazing to look down and try to identify things on the ground. I didn't realize it at the time but I was remotely sensing Earth! I could almost imagine how a bird must see the land when it's flying high in the sky. Since I cannot fly all the time like birds do, I can use another tool — Google Earth — to get the same experience. I can look at my computer screen, and identify the differences between urban and natural areas and between fields and forests. NASA creates the most amazing remotely-sensed images of space and the planets. I have always been fascinated by space and space exploration. In 1969, as I listened on my radio to the broadcast of the moon landing, I wondered what it would be like to walk on the moon and to look further out into space. Now, space telescopes, such as Hubble, provide scientists with hundreds of thousands of images for understanding our universe. Images of outer space are fascinating, but I am most excited about images of Earth. NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have created an amazing collection of satellite images, called Earth as Art. Sometimes these almost look like art from a museum. These images are not only pleasing to look at; they can also tell us valuable information. || ", "hits": 58 }, { "id": 4386, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4386/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-09T17:00:00-04:00", "title": "Beyond Graphs: You, Too, Can Be A Data Visualizer!", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.As an education specialist for NASA, I help teachers and students access and make sense of data. This often means using a type of visual representation. This could be anything from a simple bar graph to a complex animated visualization. Take a look at the last seven days of global precipitation, or other great examples relating to Visualizing Earth Systems here. While the complex animations may be difficult to replicate, a line or bar graph is just the beginning.I work for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, so let's use snow data for an example. This data is from a big snowstorm that hit upstate New York in November 2014. While the GPM satellite does measure snowfall, we'll start with data collected by \"citizen scientists.\" Citizen science is research conducted by non-professional scientists — which could include you! These particular citizen scientists are part of the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS.)The data below is from one station, graphed using Microsoft Excel. It shows snow accumulation in inches at the location of one monitoring station over four days. (Note: CoCoRaHS reports are made in the morning reflecting the previous 24 hours of precipitation. The dates below show snow that fell the day and night prior.) || ", "hits": 23 }, { "id": 4379, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4379/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-09T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Making Video Games for NASA", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.How would you like to fly alongside a NASA satellite and see the Earth as the satellite's instruments see it? You can, with a free app called NASA's Eyes on the Earth. It includes NASA's entire fleet of Earth-observing satellites. Ride along virtually with any of them in real time or at super-speed. || ", "hits": 35 }, { "id": 4378, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4378/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-02T17:00:00-04:00", "title": "Visualizations: A NASA Eye View of Our Earth", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.Nearly every time I give a talk at the Hyperwall — a genius NASA creation which combines 9 to 15 high definition screens together to show amazing visualizations, pictures, movies and more — I always like to start with the GEOS-5 model of aerosols. This visualization shows how different types of aerosols (black and organic carbon, sea salt, dust, and sulfates) move around our planet. From this mesmerizing movie, you can see where dust storms originate from the Sahara, where fires in the Amazon are spewing black carbon into the atmosphere and how sea salt is spiraling around the southern oceans in huge bands.The funny thing is that this visualization has very little to do with my own research... I just think it is really cool and most people agree with me! By getting them engaged through this visualization, they quickly see how our Earth system is interconnected and how a dust storm over China could actually impact them in their own backyards in the U.S.As a scientist, I always get excited when someone asks me about my work with the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. Usually when I start describing how the GPM Core satellite measures rainfall and why it's important, I do a lot of hand waving. Sometimes I try to describe what we can do with satellites with a metaphor or two. Those are all helpful in painting a picture. But what really seems to make the point is when I pull up a particular visualization of a dozen or so different satellites all taking precipitation measurements over the globe within the same 3-hour window. With a short movie you can see how we can get a global picture of rain and snow everywhere around the world within a few hours! || ", "hits": 36 }, { "id": 4377, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4377/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-02T16:00:00-04:00", "title": "A 3-D Look at Weather, Clouds, and Aerosols", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: The Earth Science Week 2015 page.I've always been fascinated by our atmosphere. Think about it: even though we don't see it, above us is a great aerial ocean! Over time my fascination has grown from weather maps and pondering the origins of storms, to learning all about the physics that surround our everyday lives. From as early as grade school I was also very interested in computers: diagnosing errors, developing programming skills and learning all about hardware and operating systems. So you might say my interests naturally led me to a career as a NASA scientist, where I create visualizations to study the underlying factors that drive weather patterns. Visualizations help us to see the world differently and actively.Many of you have no doubt seen your homes from space using a program called Google Earth™. But did you know you could do a lot more with the right data? In fact I often use it to map atmospheric data in three-dimensions (3-D) around the globe. But one of the challenges I often face is that data comes from many different sources, such as NASA and NOAA satellites or ground-observation stations. This means the data is stored on computer disks all over the country and are named and organized according to different standards, requiring us to customize techniques for producing accurate visualizations in one, 3-D display of the Earth. We do this in order to analyze atmospheric relationships more easily because many weather phenomena arise from physical interactions, both horizontally and vertically, in the global circulation.A big part of atmospheric research relies on using computer models to simulate what our atmosphere will do under different conditions. A great example of this is the data used to prepare the daily weather forecast. This data originates from weather forecasting models that calculate atmospheric motions using the world’s fastest supercomputers. But how do we know these forecasts are accurate? Researchers can verify a model's performance by visualizing one of the variables such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, or air pressure and then using color shading, contour curves, and wind \"barbs\" to graph that data. Then they overlay the observations from NASA satellites such as cloud-top imagery, cloud-top temperature, and vertical distributions of clouds and aerosols, with the graph (it can be challenging to synchronize the data display as these times usually don't match). After this process, the display confirms the model's accuracy. This method is used to study many atmospheric events, such as timing of a storm system, precipitation, or the direction of dust or smoke transport. || ", "hits": 94 }, { "id": 4375, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4375/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-10-02T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Garbage Patch Visualization Experiment", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.You may have heard of \"ocean garbage patches,\" areas in the ocean where litter and debris concentrates. This might stir up a vivid image of large blanketed areas of trash on the ocean surface that are easy to spot. But that’s not the case. Much of the debris consists of smaller pieces of plastic that are always moving and changing with the ocean currents, waves and winds. These can be difficult to see and predict. We set out to explore the processes and interactions that cause debris to flow to these patches using buoy and model data, and created a visualization based on our results. || ", "hits": 127 }, { "id": 4365, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4365/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-09-30T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "Airborne in the Arctic", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.Four turboprop engines roar to life under the autumnal Alaskan sun, and we begin to taxi to the main runway of Eielson Air Force Base. After extensive pre-flight configurations, our science payload is primed for our eight-hour mission. Without delay, the engines’ roar becomes a howl as we hurtle down the nearly three-mile stretch of runway until that near-weightless moment we become airborne. Our mission into the clouds of the arctic is underway.Clouds are important drivers of Earth’s climate by regulating the amount of sunlight that is absorbed at the ground versus what is reflected back into space. You’ve probably experienced this firsthand when sitting outside on a hot and sunny summer day when a fluffy cumulus cloud crosses the sky between you and the sun. The respite that you feel from the heat of the sun’s rays means that that energy is no longer reaching you at the surface. At the lower latitudes where most of us live, these thick, stratiform and cumuliform clouds have a cooling effect because the white cloud reflects the sun’s energy back to space instead of being absorbed by the dark brown soil, green trees and plants, or the blue ocean waters. The story is much more complicated at the high latitudes where the frozen ice surface is also very bright white and reflective. Under these conditions, clouds can actually have a net warming effect because they reflect a similar or smaller amount of the incoming sunlight, but also trap more of the outgoing heat radiation and keep it close to the surface (like a blanket.)The exact balance between heating and cooling depends on the cloud properties - droplet number and size - and where the clouds are located in the atmosphere (high or low altitude as well as overlying dark water or bright ice.) Unraveling these effects is important for understanding how the Earth’s radiation balance and climate exist now and how they are likely to change in the future.Differentiating the impacts of low-level clouds versus Arctic sea ice on sunlight from space is hard, because to a passive satellite sensor orbiting many hundreds of kilometers above the Earth’s surface, both the ice and cloud look very similar. To best visualize this system, we must go to the Arctic with scientific research aircraft to measure the cloud properties just below, above, and within the clouds themselves. This was precisely the motivation behind the NASA Arctic Radiation – IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE), which was conducted in the Alaskan Arctic from September-October, 2014.ARISE carried out 14 science flights aboard the NASA Wallops Flight Facility C-130 Hercules aircraft, which was outfitted with a comprehensive suite of scientific instrumentation including a laser altimeter for measuring the sea ice surface properties, in situ cloud probes, and a sun photometer and two radiometers (SSFR, BBR) for measuring the surface, aerosol, and cloud radiative properties. An example 8-hour flight track is shown for the September 7th science flight in the Google Map below. The aircraft was based at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, AK, and began each flight by transiting approximately 2 hours north to the vicinity of the ice edge in the Beaufort Sea. On the 7th, the aircraft flew a series of parallel, horizontal legs to cover a single satellite grid box of the overflying NASA Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) satellite. These measurements help CERES scientists to understand how small-scale variability in ice and cloud extent and properties affect their satellite-based retrievals. Google map showing the flight track of the NASA C-130 aircraft during a research flight conducted on 7 September 2014 north of the Alaskan coast. Before wrapping up the research flight on the 7th and beginning our 2-hour transit back to Fairbanks, we descended into the low-level clouds to measure their microphysical properties with the in situ cloud probes. The video below shows what it’s like to measure an Arctic cloud from inside it! The left side of the video shows the real-time data time series from our research instruments that we are continuously monitoring in flight. The top-right imagery is from the forward-facing camera in the C-130 cockpit. The bottom-right imagery is from the downward-facing, nadir camera mounted on the bottom of the aircraft. || ", "hits": 19 }, { "id": 4363, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4363/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-09-29T18:00:00-04:00", "title": "Notes from the Underground", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.I'm a hydrologist, which means I study how water moves around on land. Well, “on land” isn’t exactly right. It turns out that most of the interesting processes happen beneath the land surface, hidden from view. You might think, for example, that rivers fill from above — it rains and the water that doesn't sink into the ground runs off into the rivers. But in fact, about 80 percent of the water in rivers comes from underground. Rain soaks into the ground, adding water to the water table. When the water table rises to where it intersects with the land surface (on the side of a hill or even gently sloping \"flat\" land), the water penetrates through to the surface and runs downhill. Eventually, the flowing water carves out a ditch and you have a stream and ultimately a river.Let me show you what I mean: || ", "hits": 22 }, { "id": 4364, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4364/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-09-29T18:00:00-04:00", "title": "Educator Webinar: Mapping Earth's Water Cycle with NASA Scientists (Recorded)", "description": "Earth Science Week Webinar - 2014 on Vimeo!View the Concept Maps: Map 1 and Map 2 || Example flood image. || webinar_still_searchweb.png (320x180) [60.3 KB] || webinar_still_thm.png (80x40) [4.4 KB] || ESW-700x498-300x213.jpg (300x213) [14.1 KB] || ", "hits": 14 }, { "id": 4361, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4361/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-09-28T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Does What Happens in the Arctic Stay in the Arctic?", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.It all began with my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Benner. Back then my school had a weather station and one day she had asked me to collect wind speed and temperature data. I soon found myself in charge of the morning weather forecast and soon this was my favorite part of the day. Little did I know that in the years that would follow, I’d pursue my passion for clouds and meteorology to become a research scientist at NASA. Working at NASA is every bit as cool as it sounds! Everyday is different and I always find myself working with new scientific tools to uncover mysteries about our planet Earth. Lately I’ve been studying the cryosphere, or the world’s frozen places, where I’m using scientific visualizations to understand the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. In particular I’m focusing on melting sea ice to understand how it affects Arctic cloud formation.Arctic clouds are made up of tiny liquid droplets and ice particles that form from condensation and then freezing of water vapor. Water vapor is a necessary ingredient for Arctic cloud formation, and evaporation from the Arctic Ocean can serve as an important source of water vapor. But when sea ice sits on the Arctic Ocean it acts as a lid that prevents evaporation and may limit Arctic cloud formation. Over the past decade the amount of Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically and we think this trend may be influencing Arctic cloud formation.I created a visualization showing the hypothesized response of clouds to melting in sea ice (below). The difference between the left panel, \"Current Conditions,\" and the right panel, \"Future Conditions,\" is that less sea ice in the future leads to more evaporation, and more evaporation leads to more water vapor and increased cloudiness. This hypothesis is where I base my research, using state-of-the-art NASA satellite instruments including CALIPSO and CloudSAT. || ", "hits": 50 }, { "id": 4362, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4362/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2015-09-28T14:00:00-04:00", "title": "Dust in the Wind", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond. It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.Each year, millions of tons of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa is swept up into the atmosphere. The dust travels across the Atlantic Ocean, with some of it reaching as far as the Amazon Rainforest. African dust contains phosphorus, which is an important nutrient for plants, so each year the Amazon Rainforest is fertilized by dust blown all the way from Africa! We created this data visualization to tell the incredible story of this great migration.To create this visualization, I used data from NASA’s CALIPSO satellite, which measures aerosols in the atmosphere. Using Autodesk Maya and Pixar’s Renderman software (the same software Pixar uses to make movies), I created a virtual Earth with vertical walls for each time the CALIPSO satellite passed over the dust cloud. Each wall has a picture (we call them \"textures\") that represents the data collected by the satellite at that location. Each wall slices through the dust cloud, and shows us a cross-sectional view of dust distribution in the atmosphere. Although dust clouds can be seen in satellite imagery as hazy brown sections, it’s hard to determine their altitude. Knowing the height at which dust travels will help scientists determine where the dust will go, how it moves at different altitudes and how it will interact with the Earth’s climate. CALIPSO allows scientists to clearly see the shape of a dust cloud in three dimensions.The second section of the visualization describes dust flux, or how much dust flows through a specific region over a period of time. To visualize flux, I used a particle system in Autodesk Maya that creates particles at a rate and velocity relative to the flux value for a region at each time step. As the flux value increases, additional particles are created and they move faster. As flux goes down, fewer particles are created and they move slower. The result is a particle cloud that changes shape with the seasons as flux values go up and down. || ", "hits": 29 }, { "id": 40259, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/svsdb-esw2015index/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2015-09-28T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2015: Visualizing Earth Systems (Oct. 11-17)", "description": "This gallery was created for Earth Science Week 2015 and beyond, and includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. It's our hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold.ESW is an initiative of the American Geosciences Institute (AGI). NASA is a partner in ESW, collaborating with AGI's Center for Science and Society and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES).", "hits": 10 }, { "id": 4005, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4005/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2012-10-29T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Weather Satellites in Orbit (updated 2012)", "description": "This visualization showcases the five weather satellites that create NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) products. The five geosynchronous satellites are: GOES-13, GOES-15, Meteosat-7, Meteosat-9 and MTSAT-2.This is updated version of entry: #3781: Weather Satellites in Orbit (completed in 2010) || ", "hits": 18 }, { "id": 11101, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11101/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-09-28T13:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2012: Christy Hansen", "description": "Profile of Operation IceBridge project manager Christy Hansen for Earth Science Week 2012. || ", "hits": 18 }, { "id": 11099, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11099/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-09-26T12:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week: Career Spotlights", "description": "Join us during Earth Science Week 2012 to meet an incredible group of NASA Earth Explorers — from scientists and engineers, to multimedia producers, educators and writers.Find out about their careers, why and how they study the planet, and what their typical days are like. From video interviews to blog posts and more, there will be a variety of multimedia activities that will allow Explorers to tell their stories. Have questions of your own? Participate in live Twitter interviews and Google+ Hangouts held throughout the week, as well as during a radio interview and webinar in Spanish.On October 18, learn about the many contributions of women at NASA to Earth science as part of Female Geoscientists Day.The 2012 NASA ESW website will be your one-stop-source for Earth science careers and resources during ESW and beyond. There you will find a collection of articles, information about events, links to blog posts, transcripts of Twitter interviews, and educational products in English and Spanish. || ", "hits": 21 }, { "id": 11096, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11096/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2012-09-18T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Discover Your Career", "description": "Earth Science Week 2012: Discovering Careers in Earth Science || ", "hits": 19 }, { "id": 10842, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10842/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-10-10T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2011", "description": "This year's Earth Science Week theme is \"Our Ever-changing Earth.\" These short introductory videos are designed to give educators a brief tour of what resources NASA has to offer. For more information and resources, visit the Earth Science Week website.This page contains video segments with NASA scientists Gavin Schmidt, William Lau, and Waleed Abdalati. || ", "hits": 15 }, { "id": 10814, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10814/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2011-10-06T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2011 Kickoff", "description": "This year's Earth Science Week theme is \"Our Ever-changing Earth.\" These short introductory videos are designed to give educators a brief tour of what resources NASA has to offer. For more information and resources, visit the Earth Science Week website. || ", "hits": 5 }, { "id": 3837, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3837/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2011-06-13T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Components of the Water Cycle on a Flat Map for Science On a Sphere", "description": "Water regulates climate, predominately storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carry heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land and back to the ocean is called the water cycle. The animations below each portray a component of the water cycle. These animations of the components of the water cycle were created for the Science On a Sphere production \"Loop\" using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 25-days. Variables animated here include hourly clouds, precipitation, evaporation and water vapor. For more information on GEOS-5 see https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5. Some of these visualizations are an orthographic view of the data used in Components of the Water Cycle. || ", "hits": 76 }, { "id": 3811, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3811/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2011-01-11T00:00:00-05:00", "title": "Components of the Water Cycle on a Flat Map", "description": "Water regulates climate, predominately storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carry heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land and back to the ocean is called the water cycle. The animations below each portray a component of the water cycle. The three animations of atmospheric phenomena were created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 25-days. Variables animated here include hourly evaporation, water vapor and precipitation. For more information on GEOS-5 see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5 . For more information on the cubed-sphere work see http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/610.3/cubedsphere.html.The animation of global sea surface temperature was created using data from a model run of ECCO's Ocean General Circulation Model. See http://www.ecco-group.org/model.htm for more information on ECCO.This group of animations are an orthographic view of the data used in Components of the Water Cycle. || ", "hits": 85 }, { "id": 3781, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3781/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2010-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Weather Satellites in Orbit", "description": "This visualization showcases the five weather satellites that create NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) products. The five geosynchronous satellites are: GOES-11, GOES-13, MSG-2, Meteosat-7 and MTSAT-2. || ", "hits": 33 }, { "id": 10664, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10664/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-09-28T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2010 - Exploring Energy", "description": "\"Exploring Energy\" is the theme of this year's Earth Science Week, Oct. 10-16. The American Geological Institute hosts Earth Science Week annually in cooperation with various sponsors to engage people in Earth science and encourage stewardship of Earth. NASA develops, deploys and manages an array of satellites that monitor and measure energy as it flows into, through and out of the Earth system. During Earth Science Week, a series of short videos will be posted to NASA's Earth Science Week website. Aimed at educators, the videos will present activities for different grade levels that highlight how NASA explores Earth's energy, such as the energy that fuels hurricanes.For archived Earth Science Week material, please visit the Earth Science Educator Resource Gallery.For additional multimedia resources, please check out the Energy Essentials Gallery. || ", "hits": 17 }, { "id": 10665, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10665/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2010-09-27T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2009 Digital Learning Network Event", "description": "The full webcast for Earth Science Week 2009: The Changing Oceans. This webcast features Dr. Marci Delaney and Dr. Gene Feldman, as well as questions from participating schools. || esw09.00427_print.jpg (1024x576) [103.2 KB] || esw09_webcast_thm.png (80x40) [14.4 KB] || esw09_webcast_web.png (320x179) [118.0 KB] || esw09_webcast_searchweb.png (320x180) [91.2 KB] || ESW09_Webcast_640x360.webmhd.webm (960x540) [224.4 MB] || ESW09_Webcast_640x360.mov (640x360) [215.0 MB] || ESW09_Webcast_ipod_sm.m4v (320x180) [137.7 MB] || ESW09_Webcast.wmv (346x260) [203.0 MB] || ", "hits": 9 }, { "id": 40078, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/earth-science-education/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2010-09-26T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Educator Resources", "description": "On this page is a collection of Goddard video pieces that have been created for education related events. You will find recordings of past webcasts, earth science web shorts and professional development resources. We hope this will become your first stop when shopping for multimedia lesson objects to apply in your classroom.", "hits": 69 }, { "id": 40075, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/energy-essentials/", "result_type": "Gallery", "release_date": "2010-08-17T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Energy Essentials", "description": "Energy. What do we really know about it? Where does the energy we use come from? How does energy flow through the systems of our planet? How is our energy consumption changing our climate? Who uses the most energy? In celebration of Earth Science Week's 2010 theme, Exploring Energy, NASA presents a multimedia gallery that helps answer some of these questions. The images, data visualizations, animations and videos in this gallery highlight how NASA satellite data and research help us better understand how much is reaching Earth from the Sun, how it's distributed across the Earth, where humans are tapping into that energy, and the many ways in which our energy use is transforming our planet. You can download the imagery in a variety of formats directly from this site. For more multimedia resources on energy and other topics, search the Scientific Visualization Studio. To learn more about Earth Science Week 2010, visit the Earth Science Week web site.", "hits": 248 }, { "id": 3656, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3656/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-17T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Sea Level Rise \"What Ifs\" in the Southeastern United States", "description": "This visualization shows the Southeastern United States with population data over the land. Darker areas over land indicate higher population densities. Sea level scenarios are shown starting with 0 meters of sea level rise (current sea level) and proceeding through 9 meters of rise. Blue areas moving inland indicate where the coastline would be at various levels.We will likely see some sea level rise in our lifetimes, but the middle-to-higher levels in this visualization are unlikely in the next 100 years.This visualization is based on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. This data primarily measured canopy heights. So, this visualization is showing where water might reach the tops of the trees in various areas. || ", "hits": 24 }, { "id": 10497, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10497/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "The Ocean's Green Machines", "description": "One tiny marine plant makes life on Earth possible: phytoplankton. These microscopic photosynthetic drifters form the basis of the marine food web, they regulate carbon in the atmosphere, and are responsible for half of the photosynthesis that takes place on this planet. Earth's climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and as our home planet warms, so does the ocean. Warming waters have big consequences for phytoplankton and for the planet. For complete transcript, click here. || Oceans_Green_Machines_640x480_ESWpage.00427_print.jpg (1024x576) [65.8 KB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_640x480_ESWpage_web.png (320x180) [135.9 KB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_640x480_ESWpage_thm.png (80x40) [15.0 KB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_AppleTV.webmhd.webm (960x540) [80.8 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_1280x720_ProRes.mov (1280x720) [4.9 GB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_1280x720_H264.mov (1280x720) [176.1 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_1280x720_ESWpage.mp4 (1280x720) [115.8 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_AppleTV.m4v (960x540) [195.1 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_640x360_ipod.m4v (640x360) [62.2 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_640x480_ESWpage.mp4 (640x360) [62.2 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_512x288.mpg (512x288) [113.3 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines_320x180.mp4 (320x180) [27.7 MB] || Oceans_Green_Machines.wmv (320x176) [37.8 MB] || ", "hits": 91 }, { "id": 10498, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10498/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Keeping Up With Carbon", "description": "Carbon is all around us. This unique atom is the basic building block of life, and its compounds form solids, liquids, or gases. Carbon helps form the bodies of living organisms; it dissolves in the ocean; mixes in the atmosphere; and can be stored in the crust of the planet. A carbon atom could spend millions of years moving through this complex cycle. The ocean plays the most critical role in regulating Earth's carbon balance, and understanding how the carbon cycle is changing is key to understanding Earth's changing climate. For complete transcript, click here. || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_640x360_ESWpage.00577_print.jpg (1024x576) [71.2 KB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_640x360_ESWpage_web.png (320x180) [128.6 KB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_640x360_ESWpage_thm.png (80x40) [13.9 KB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_AppleTV.webmhd.webm (960x540) [84.1 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_1280x720_ProRes.mov (1280x720) [5.1 GB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_1280x720_H264.mov (1280x720) [159.3 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_1280x720_ESWpage.mp4 (1280x720) [133.5 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_AppleTV.m4v (960x540) [201.6 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_640x360_ipod.m4v (640x360) [63.2 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_640x360_ESWpage.mp4 (640x360) [63.2 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_512x288.mpg (512x288) [123.9 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon_320x180.mp4 (320x180) [26.0 MB] || Keeping_Up_with_Carbon.wmv (320x176) [39.0 MB] || ", "hits": 133 }, { "id": 10502, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10502/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Climate Change and the Global Ocean", "description": "We know climate change can affect us, but does climate change alter something as vast, deep and mysterious as our oceans? For years, scientists have studied the world's oceans by sending out ships and divers, deploying data-gathering buoys, and by taking aerial measurements from planes. But one of the better ways to understand oceans is to gain an even broader perspective - the view from space. NASA's Earth observing satellites do more than just take pictures of our planet. High-tech sensors gather data, including ocean surface temperature, surface winds, sea level, circulation, and even marine life. Information the satellites obtain help us understand the complex interactions driving the world's oceans today - and gain valuable insight into how the impacts of climate change on oceans might affect us on dry land.For complete transcript, click here. || Global_Ocean_ipod_320x240.01252_print.jpg (1024x576) [77.3 KB] || Global_Ocean_ipod_320x240_web.png (320x180) [84.7 KB] || Global_Ocean_ipod_320x240_thm.png (80x40) [16.1 KB] || Global_Ocean_appletv.webmhd.webm (960x540) [78.2 MB] || Global_Ocean_broll_prores.mov (1280x720) [5.3 GB] || Global_Ocean_1280x720.mp4 (1280x720) [159.8 MB] || Global_Ocean_appletv.m4v (960x540) [187.1 MB] || Global_Ocean_H264_1280x720_30fps.mov (1280x720) [167.6 MB] || Global_Ocean_youtube_1280x720.mov (1280x720) [79.2 MB] || Global_Ocean_ipod_640x480.m4v (640x360) [59.9 MB] || Global_Ocean_ipod_320x240.m4v (320x180) [25.9 MB] || Global_Ocean.wmv (346x260) [39.1 MB] || ", "hits": 26 }, { "id": 10503, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10503/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Melting Ice, Rising Seas", "description": "Sea level rise is an indicator that our planet is warming. Much of the world's population lives on or near the coast, and rising seas are something worth watching. Sea level can rise for two reasons, both linked to a warming planet. When ice on land, such as mountain glaciers or the ice sheets of Greenland or Antarctica, melt, that water contributes to sea level rise. And when our oceans get warmer - another indicator of climate change - the water expands, also making sea level higher. Using satellites, lasers, and radar in space, and dedicated researchers on the ground, NASA is studying the Earth's ice and water to better understand how sea level rise might affect us all.For complete transcript, click here. || Melting_Seas_ipod_640x480.03027_print.jpg (1024x576) [80.7 KB] || Melting_Seas_ipod_640x480_web.png (320x180) [156.6 KB] || Melting_Seas_ipod_640x480_thm.png (80x40) [16.6 KB] || Melting_Seas_appletv_1280x720.webmhd.webm (960x540) [67.9 MB] || Melting_Seas_H264_1280x720_30fps.mov (1280x720) [128.9 MB] || Melting_Seas_1280x720.mp4 (1280x720) [125.1 MB] || Melting_Seas_broll_prores.mov (1280x720) [4.4 GB] || Melting_Seas_youtube_1280x720.mov (1280x720) [69.1 MB] || Melting_Seas_appletv_1280x720.m4v (960x540) [160.0 MB] || Melting_Seas_ipod_640x480.m4v (640x360) [49.7 MB] || Melting_Seas_ipod_320x240.m4v (320x180) [21.1 MB] || Rising_Seas.wmv (346x260) [38.5 MB] || ", "hits": 46 }, { "id": 10504, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10504/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Salt of the Earth", "description": "Salinity plays a major role in how ocean waters circulate around the globe. Salinity changes can create ocean circulation changes that, in turn, may impact regional and global climates. The extent to which salinity impacts our global ocean circulation is still relatively unknown, but NASA's new Aquarius mission will help advance that understanding by painting a global picture of our planet's salty waters.For complete transcript, click here. || Salt_of_the_Earth_640x480.00519_print.jpg (1024x576) [66.1 KB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_640x480_web.png (320x180) [106.1 KB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_640x480_thm.png (80x40) [12.6 KB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_appletv_1280x720.webmhd.webm (960x540) [65.9 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_H264_1280x720_30fps.mov (1280x720) [150.0 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_appletv_1280x720.m4v (960x540) [166.5 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_1280x720.mp4 (1280x720) [99.9 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_broll_prores.mov (1280x720) [4.7 GB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_Youtube_1280x720.mov (1280x720) [72.2 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_640x480.m4v (640x360) [55.1 MB] || GSFC_20091012_Aquarius_m10504_Salt.en_US.srt [6.0 KB] || GSFC_20091012_Aquarius_m10504_Salt.en_US.vtt [6.1 KB] || Salt_of_the_Earth_ipod_320x240.m4v (320x180) [23.1 MB] || Salt_of_the_Earth.wmv (346x260) [35.0 MB] || ", "hits": 197 }, { "id": 3652, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3652/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-09T13:24:00-04:00", "title": "Sea Surface Temperature, Salinity and Density", "description": "Sea Surface TemperatureThe oceans of the world are heated at the surface by the sun, and this heating is uneven for many reasons. The Earth's axial rotation, revolution about the sun, and tilt all play a role, as do the wind-driven ocean surface currents. The first animation in this group shows the long-term average sea surface temperature, with red and yellow depicting warmer waters and blue depicting colder waters. The most obvious feature of this temperature map is the variation of the temperature by latitude, from the warm region along the equator to the cold regions near the poles. Another visible feature is the cooler regions just off the western coasts of North America, South America, and Africa. On these coasts, winds blow from land to ocean and push the warm water away from the coast, allowing cooler water to rise up from deeper in the ocean. || ", "hits": 752 }, { "id": 10494, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10494/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-09T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "The Carbon Cycle", "description": "Carbon is the basic building block of life, and these unique atoms are found everywhere on Earth. Carbon makes up Earth's plants and animals, and is also stored in the ocean, the atmosphere, and the crust of the planet. A carbon atom could spend millions of years moving through Earth in a complex cycle. This conceptual animation provides an illustration of the various parts of the Carbon cycle. Purple arrows indicate the uptake of Carbon; yellow arrows indicate the release of Carbon. On land, plants remove carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Animals eat plants and either breath out the carbon, or it moves up the food chain. When plants and animals die and decay, they transfer carbon back to the soil. Moving offshore, the ocean takes up carbon through physical and biological processes. At the ocean's surface, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves into the water. Tiny marine plants called phytoplankton use this carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. Phytoplankton are the base of the marine food web. After animals eat the plants, they breathe out the carbon or pass it up the food chain. Sometimes phytoplankton die, decompose, and are recycled in the surface waters. Phytoplankton can also sink to the bottom of the ocean, where they become buried in marine sediment. Over long time scales, this process has made the ocean floor the largest reservoir of carbon on the planet. In a process called upwelling, currents bring cold water containing carbon up to the surface. As the water warms, the carbon is then be released as a gas back into the atmosphere, continuing the carbon cycle. Carbon is found in the atmosphere as Carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases act like a blanket, and trap heat in the atmosphere. In the past two centuries, humans have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by more than 30%, by burning fossil-fuels and cutting down forests. || ", "hits": 246 }, { "id": 10501, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10501/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-09T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "The Water Cycle", "description": "This animation shows one molecule of water completing the hydrologic cycle. Heat from the sun causes the molecule to evaporate from the ocean's surface. Once it evaporates, it is transported high in the atmosphere and condenses to form clouds. Clouds can move great distances and eventually the water molecule will fall as rain or snow. Ultimately, the water molecule arrives back where it started...at the ocean. || water_cycle_appletv_1280x720.00713_print.jpg (1024x576) [76.9 KB] || water_cycle_appletv_1280x720_web.png (320x180) [194.0 KB] || water_cycle_appletv_1280x720_thm.png (80x40) [15.8 KB] || water_cycle_appletv_1280x720.webmhd.webm (960x540) [13.4 MB] || water_cycle_appletv_1280x720.m4v (960x540) [33.0 MB] || water_cycle_broll_prores.mov (1280x720) [736.3 MB] || water_cycle_h264_1280x720.mov (1280x720) [40.1 MB] || water_cycle_youtube_1280x720.mov (1280x720) [18.9 MB] || 1280x720_16x9_30p (1280x720) [256.0 KB] || water_cycle_ipod_640x480.m4v (640x360) [15.3 MB] || water_cycle_ipod_320x240.m4v (320x180) [5.2 MB] || ", "hits": 115 }, { "id": 10509, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10509/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2009-10-09T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Water, Water Everywhere!", "description": "Water is all around us, and its importance to nearly every natural process on earth cannot be underestimated. The water cycle is the movement of water around the Earth in all its forms, from the ocean to the atmosphere, to snow, soil, aquifers, lakes, and streams on land, and ultimately backs to the ocean. This video explains what the water cycle is and how important it is to life on earth.For complete transcript, click here. || Water_Water_Everywhere_640x480.01727_print.jpg (1024x576) [218.0 KB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_640x480_web.png (320x180) [275.8 KB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_640x480_thm.png (80x40) [18.1 KB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_AppleTV.webmhd.webm (960x540) [95.5 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_640x480.mp4 (1280x720) [231.3 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_AppleTV.m4v (960x540) [229.2 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_H264.mov (1280x720) [2.0 GB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_friday_1280x720.mp4 (1280x720) [231.3 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_friday.mov (1280x720) [6.4 GB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_ipod_640x480m4v.m4v (640x360) [72.1 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_friday_640x480.mp4 (640x360) [72.1 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_1280x720.mp4 (640x480) [97.6 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_friday.mp4 (320x180) [30.1 MB] || Water_Water_Everywhere_friday.wmv (320x236) [26.9 MB] || ", "hits": 163 }, { "id": 3639, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3639/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Rotating Blue Marble", "description": "The Blue Marble Next Generation (BMNG) data set provides a monthly global cloud-free true-color picture of the Earth's landcover at a 500-meter spatial resolution. This data set, shown on a globe, is derived from monthly data collected in 2004. The ocean color is derived from applying a depth shading to the bathymetry data. The Antarctica coverage shown is the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica. || ", "hits": 347 }, { "id": 3640, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3640/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Rotating Cloudy Galileo Transitions to Blue Marble View", "description": "The MODIS instruments on the Terra and Aqua satellites take multi-spectral images of the Earth daily. This realistic, cloudy Earth is a composite of MODIS imagery from March 3, 2009. This animation reveals a transition from the MODIS view of Earth to the Blue Marble image, to allow a look at the planet without clouds. The Blue Marble Next Generation (BMNG) data set provides a monthly global cloud-free true-color picture of the Earth's landcover at a 500-meter spatial resolution. This data set, shown on a globe, is derived from monthly data collected in 2004. The ocean color is derived from applying a depth shading to the bathymetry data. The Antarctica coverage shown is the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica. || ", "hits": 77 }, { "id": 3641, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3641/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Rotating Phytoplankton 10-year Global Average", "description": "The SeaWiFS instrument aboard the SeaStar satellite has been collecting ocean data since 1997. By monitoring the color of reflected light via satellite, scientists can determine how successfully plant life is photosynthesizing. A measurement of photosynthesis is essentially a measurement of successful growth, and growth means successful use of ambient carbon. This animation displays the 10-year global average of nearly a decade's worth of data taken by the SeaWiFS instrument, showing the abundance of life in the sea. Dark blue represents warmer areas where there is little life due to lack of nutrients, and greens and reds represent cooler nutrient-rich areas. || ", "hits": 17 }, { "id": 3642, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3642/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Regions Exhibiting Decreased Phytoplankton Levels and Increased Sea Surface Temperatures", "description": "Throughout most of Earth's ocean, as the surface layer of the ocean warms, the water becomes less dense and forms a cap, rather than mixing down to allow cooler, nutrient-rich water to well up. Over time, areas with less mixing show reduced productivity and less phytoplankton. This data visualization highlights regions where a strong correlation between high sea surface temperatures and decreased phytoplankton productivity occurred from 1997-2006. For nearly a decade, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) has been making global observations of phytoplankton productivity. On December 6, 2006, NASA-funded scientists announced that warming sea surface temperatures over the past decade have caused a global decline in phytoplankton productivity. || ", "hits": 13 }, { "id": 3643, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3643/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Hourly Atmospheric Water Vapor from the GEOS-5 Model", "description": "These three animations portray the hourly flow of atmospheric water vapor around the world. The animations were created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 30-days. For more information on the GEOS-5, see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5 . For more information on the cubed-sphere work, see http://sivo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cubedsphere_overview.html. || ", "hits": 22 }, { "id": 3644, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3644/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Hourly Evaporation from the GEOS-5 Model", "description": "This animation of the global hourly evaporation shows how heating from the sun during the day causes increased evaporation over land areas. Two versions of this animation are provided: one with a day/night clock inset and one without. The animation was created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 30-days. For more information on the GEOS-5, see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5. For more information on the cubed-sphere work, see http://sivo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cubedsphere_overview.html. || ", "hits": 26 }, { "id": 3645, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3645/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Hourly Total Precipitation from the GEOS-5 Model", "description": "This animation portrays the hourly flow of precipitation around the world. The animation was created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 30-days. For more information on the GEOS-5, see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5 . For more information on the cubed-sphere work, see http://sivo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cubedsphere_overview.html. || ", "hits": 10 }, { "id": 3648, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3648/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Components of the Water Cycle", "description": "Water regulates climate, storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carry heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land and back to the ocean is called the water cycle. The animations below each portray a component of the water cycle. All use an identical view and camera motion to allow for easy compositing.Data for the animation of global sea surface temperature was derived from a model run of ECCO's Ocean General Circulation Model. See http://www.ecco-group.org/model.htm for more information on ECCO.Data for the animation of atmospheric phenomena was created using data from the GEOS-5 atmospheric model on the cubed-sphere, run at 14-km global resolution for 25-days. Variables animated here include evaporation, water vapor and precipitation.For more information on the GEOS-5 see http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/systems/geos5.For more information on the cubed-sphere work see http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/610.3/cubedsphere.html.All three of these animations are time synchronous throughout the animation to allow cross fades during compositing.The final animation shown here, a pulsing network of rivers over the continents, represents the flow of water from land back into the ocean, thereby completing the water cycle.A flat version of these animations can be found in item #3811. || ", "hits": 69 }, { "id": 3658, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3658/", "result_type": "Visualization", "release_date": "2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "The Thermohaline Circulation - The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt", "description": "The oceans are mostly composed of warm salty water near the surface over cold, less salty water in the ocean depths. These two regions don't mix except in certain special areas. The ocean currents, the movement of the ocean in the surface layer, are driven mostly by the wind. In certain areas near the polar oceans, the colder surface water also gets saltier due to evaporation or sea ice formation. In these regions, the surface water becomes dense enough to sink to the ocean depths. This pumping of surface water into the deep ocean forces the deep water to move horizontally until it can find an area on the world where it can rise back to the surface and close the current loop. This usually occurs in the equatorial ocean, mostly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This very large, slow current is called the thermohaline circulation because it is caused by temperature and salinity (haline) variations.This animation shows one of the major regions where this pumping occurs, the North Atlantic Ocean around Greenland, Iceland, and the North Sea. The surface ocean current brings new water to this region from the South Atlantic via the Gulf Stream and the water returns to the South Atlantic via the North Atlantic Deep Water current. The continual influx of warm water into the North Atlantic polar ocean keeps the regions around Iceland and southern Greenland mostly free of sea ice year round.The animation also shows another feature of the global ocean circulation: the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The region around latitude 60 south is the the only part of the Earth where the ocean can flow all the way around the world with no land in the way. As a result, both the surface and deep waters flow from west to east around Antarctica. This circumpolar motion links the world's oceans and allows the deep water circulation from the Atlantic to rise in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the surface circulation to close with the northward flow in the Atlantic.The color on the world's ocean's at the beginning of this animation represents surface water density, with dark regions being most dense and light regions being least dense (see the animation Sea Surface Temperature, Salinity and Density). The depths of the oceans are highly exaggerated to better illustrate the differences between the surface flows and deep water flows. The actual flows in this model are based on current theories of the thermohaline circulation rather than actual data. The thermohaline circulation is a very slow moving current that can be difficult to distinguish from general ocean circulation. Therefore, it is difficult to measure or simulate. || ", "hits": 208 }, { "id": 10264, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10264/", "result_type": "Produced Video", "release_date": "2008-10-14T00:00:00-04:00", "title": "Earth Science Week 2008", "description": "Keep your eyes glued to the Goddard Web site through the week of October 12 for daily videos that answer several questions about our home planet. The videos are all part of Earth Science Week: 2008, themed 'No Child Left Inside.' || ", "hits": 14 } ] }