Carbon and Climate

Visualization showing forest change in various locations from 1986 to 2010This video is also available on our YouTube channel. || The North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) study provides annual maps of forest disturbance in the conterminous United States, from 1986-2010. Using data from the NASA/USGS Landsat satellite program, the NAFD study produces maps at a spatial resolution of 30-meters. Spanning the 25 years of the study required 26,142 Landsat images and the use of the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) supercomputing facility. Each annual map has classified pixels showing water, no forest cover, forest cover, no data available (data gaps) in present year, and forest disturbances that occurred in that year. Forest disturbance, in this study, refers to any removal or loss of the forest canopy. There were disturbances from natural causes, such as fires, insect outbreaks, hurricanes, tornadoes, and snow storms. There were also human-caused disturbances such as timber harvesting, urban development, and mining. Major timber harvest areas included the Southeast, the Pacific Northwest, and Maine. Extensive mountaintop mining was found in the Southern Appalachians, extending from Western Virginia to Tennessee. The eastern coast suffered substantial damages from hurricanes, while large scale damages from fire and insect outbreak were mostly in the western U.S.This study is a core project of the North American Carbon Program (NACP), a multidisciplinary research program designed to obtain scientific understanding of North America’s carbon sources and sinks and quantify changes in carbon stocks. This information is being used to evaluate the role of forest disturbance in the North American carbon cycle, which will help meet societal concerns and provide tools for decision makers.The NAFD (North American Forest Dynamics) study, a core project of the North American Carbon Program (NACP), was supported by grants from NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology, Carbon Cycle Sciences, and Applied Sciences Programs. The UMD group was supported under NASA Grant NNX11AJ78G S01. Associated NAFD-NEX activities have been carried out by Warren Cohen, USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station (Product Validation), Jeffrey Masek, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Regrowth Dynamics), Gretchen Moisen, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station (Causal Factors Attribution) and Ramakrishna Nemani, NASA Ames Research Center (NEX computing).Data Citation:Goward, S.N., C. Huang, F. Zhao, K. Schleeweis, K. Rishmawi, M. Lindsey, J.L. Dungan, and A. Michaelis. 2015. NACP NAFD Project: Forest Disturbance History from Landsat, 1986-2010. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1290 ||

In this animation, NASA instruments show the seasonal cycle of vegetation and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The animation begins on January 1, when the northern hemisphere is in winter and the southern hemisphere is in summer. At this time of year, the bulk of living vegetation, shown in green, hovers around the equator and below it, in the southern hemisphere.As the animation plays forward through mid-April, the concentration of carbon dioxide, shown in orange-yellow, in the middle part of Earth's lowest atmospheric layer, the troposphere, increases and spreads throughout the northern hemisphere, reaching a maximum around May. This blooming effect of carbon dioxide follows the seasonal changes that occur in northern latitude ecosystems, in which deciduous trees lose their leaves, resulting in a net release of carbon dioxide through a process called respiration. Carbon dioxide is also released in early spring as soils begin to warm. Almost 10 percent of atmospheric carbon dioxide passes through soils each year.After April, the northern hemisphere moves into late spring and summer and plants begin to grow, reaching a peak in the late summer. The process of plant photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the air. The animation shows how carbon dioxide is scrubbed out of the atmosphere by the large volume of new and growing vegetation. Following the peak in vegetation, the drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide due to photosynthesis becomes apparent, particularly over the boreal forests.Note that there is roughly a three-month lag between the state of vegetation at Earth's surface and its effect on carbon dioxide in the middle troposphere.Data like these give scientists a new opportunity to better understand the relationships between carbon dioxide in Earth's middle troposphere and the seasonal cycle of vegetation near the surface.Creating the AnimationThis animation was created with data taken from two NASA spaceborne instruments. The concentration of carbon dioxide data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), a weather and climate instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft, is overlain on measurements of vegetation index from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, also on NASA's Aqua spacecraft, to better understand how photosynthesis and respiration influences the atmospheric carbon dioxide cycle over the globe. The animation runs from January through December and repeats. The AIRS tropospheric carbon dioxide seasonal cycle values were made by averaging AIRS data collected between 2003 and 2010, from which the annual carbon dioxide growth trend of 2 parts per million per year has been removed. For example, the data used for January 1 is actually an average of eight years of AIRS carbon dioxide data taken each year on January 1. The vegetation values were made using data averaged over a four-year period, from 2003 to 2006.Further DetailAIRS uses infrared technology to determine the concentration of atmospheric water vapor and several important trace gases as well as information about temperature and clouds. AIRS orbits Earth from pole-to-pole at an altitude of 438 miles (705 kilometers), measuring Earth's infrared spectrum in 3,278 channels spanning a wavelength range from 3.74 microns to 15.4 microns. Originally designed to improve weather forecasts, AIRS has improved operational five-day weather forecasts more than any other single instrument over the past decade. AIRS has also been found to be sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide in the middle troposphere, at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometers or 3 to 6 miles. AIRS is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For further information, access the AIRS projectThe MODIS instrument is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. For further information, access the MODIS project. ||

This visualization leads viewers on a narrated global tour of fire detections beginning in July 2002 and ending July 2011. The visualization also includes vegetation and snow cover data to show how fires respond to seasonal changes. The tour begins in Australia in 2002 by showing a network of massive grassland fires spreading across interior Australia as well as the greener Eucalyptus forests in the northern and eastern part of the continent. The tour then shifts to Asia where large numbers of agricultural fires are visible first in China in June 2004, then across a huge swath of Europe and western Russia in August, and then across India and Southeast Asia through the early part of 2005. It moves next to Africa, the continent that has more abundant burning than any other. MODIS observations have shown that some 70 percent of the world's fires occur in Africa alone. In what's a fairly average burning season, the visualization shows a huge outbreak of savanna fires during the dry season in Central Africa in July, August, and September of 2006, driven mainly by agricultural activities but also by the fact that the region experiences more lightning than anywhere else in the world. The tour shifts next to South America where a steady flickering of fire is visible across much of the Amazon rainforest with peaks of activity in September and November of 2009. Almost all of the fires in the Amazon are the direct result of human activity, including slash-and-burn agriculture, because the high moisture levels in the region prevent inhibit natural fires from occurring. It concludes in North America, a region where fires are comparatively rare. North American fires make up just 2 percent of the world's burned area each year. The fires that receive the most attention in the United States, the uncontrolled forest fires in the West, are less visible than the wave of agricultural fires prominent in the Southeast and along the Mississippi River Valley, but some of the large wildfires that struck Texas earlier this spring are visible. More information on the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is available at http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/. ||

Twelve years of global deforestation, wildfires, windstorms, insect infestations, and more are captured in a new set of forest disturbance maps created from billions of pixels acquired by the imager on the NASA-USGS Landsat 7 satellite. The maps are the first to measure forest loss and gain using a consistent method around the globe at high spatial resolution, allowing scientists to compare forest changes in different countries and to monitor annual deforestation. Since each pixel in a Landsat image represents a piece of land about the size of a baseball diamond, researchers can see enough detail to tell local, regional and global stories. Hansen and colleagues analyzed 143 billion pixels in 654,000 Landsat images to compile maps of forest loss and gain between 2000 and 2012. During that period, 888,000 square miles (2.3 million square kilometers) of forest was lost, and 308,900 square miles (0.8 million square kilometers) regrew. The researchers, including scientists from the University of Maryland, Google, the State University of New York, Woods Hole Research Center, the U.S. Geological Survey and South Dakota State University, published their work in the Nov. 15, 2013, issue of the journal Science.Key to the project was collaboration with team members from Google Earth Engine, who reproduced in the Google Cloud the models developed at the University of Maryland for processing and characterizing the Landsat data; Google Earth Engine contains a complete copy of the Landsat record. The computing required to generate these maps would have taken 15 years on a single desktop computer, but with cloud computing was performed in a few days. Since 1972, the Landsat program has played a critical role in monitoring, understanding and managing the resources needed to sustain human life such as food, water and forests. Landsat 8 launched Feb. 11, 2013, and is jointly managed by NASA and USGS to continue the 40-plus years of Earth observations. To view the forest cover maps in Google Earth Engine, visit: http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/google.com/science-2013-global-forest ||

In the rain forest of Rondonia in western Brazil, deforestation has cut a unique fishbone pattern into the landscape that is visible from space. Beginning in the 1970s, farmers and ranchers began to clear land that branched off one main road. As new roads penetrated deeper into the forest, the continued clearing ultimately left a number of orthogonal scars running through the lush canopy. The many forest edges created by this crosshatching fragment the ecosystem and negatively impact biodiversity, even more so than logging that clear-cuts habitat. By the 2000s, connected deforested areas created open spaces now used as farmland and pastures. The visualization shows images of the rain forest captured by USGS-NASA Landsat satellites from 1975 to 2012. ||

Animation of carbon dioxide released from two different sources: fires (biomass burning) and massive urban centers known as megacities. The animation covers a five day period in June 2006. The model is based on real emission data and is then set to run so that scientists can observe how the greenhouse gas behaves once it has been emitted. || This animation is based on a supercomputer climate simulation that shows two different sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide — fires (biomass burning) and massive urban centers known as megacities.Scientists are using climate models like this one — called GEOS-5 (Goddard Earth Observing Model, Version 5, created at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) — to better understand how carbon dioxide moves around Earth’s atmosphere and how carbon moves through Earth’s air, land and ocean over time. Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are driving Earth’s ongoing climate change.This animation shows a five-day period in June 2006. The model is based on real emissions inventory data and is then set to run so that scientists can observe how the greenhouse gas behaves in the atmosphere once it has been emitted. ||

This visualization is a time-series of the global distribution and variation of the concentration of mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide observed by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the NASA Aqua spacecraft. For comparison, it is overlain by a graph of the seasonal variation and interannual increase of carbon dioxide observed at the Mauna Loa, Hawaii observatory.The graph shows data, commonly called the Keeling Curve, from the Scripps measurements of monthly carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Loa Observatory. The collection of this data was started by C. David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in March of 1958 at a facility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Keeling, 1976]. The two most notable features of this visualization are the seasonal variation of carbon dioxide and the trend of increase in its concentration from year to year. The global map clearly shows that the carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere peaks in April-May and then drops to a minimum in September-October. Although the seasonal cycle is less pronounced in the Southern Hemisphere it is opposite to that in the Northern Hemisphere. This seasonal cycle is governed by the growth cycle of plants. The Northern Hemisphere has the majority of the land masses, and so the amplitude of the cycle is greater in that hemisphere. The overall color of the map shifts toward the red with advancing time due to the annual increase of carbon dioxide.The concentration of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere lags the concentration found at the surface as mixing from the lower to upper altitudes usually takes days to weeks.More information about AIRS can be found at http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov. More information about the carbon dioxide concentration at Mauna Loa Observatory can be found at http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/ ||

An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. The simulation also illustrates differences in carbon dioxide levels in the northern and southern hemispheres and distinct swings in global carbon dioxide concentrations as the growth cycle of plants and trees changes with the seasons.The carbon dioxide visualization was produced by a computer model called GEOS-5, created by scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.The visualization is a product of a simulation called a “Nature Run.” The Nature Run ingests real data on atmospheric conditions and the emission of greenhouse gases and both natural and man-made particulates. The model is then left to run on its own and simulate the natural behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nature Run simulates January 2006 through December 2006.While Goddard scientists worked with a “beta” version of the Nature Run internally for several years, they released this updated, improved version to the scientific community for the first time in the fall of 2014. ||

NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) uses the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 Data Assimilation System (GEOS­-5 DAS) to produce global numerical weather forecasts on a routine basis. GMAO forecasts play important roles in managing NASA’s fleet of science satellites and in researching the impact of new satellite observations. In order to provide timely information about the state of the atmosphere for NASA instrument teams and researchers, the GMAO runs the GEOS-­5 DAS four times each day in real time. For each forecast, it is necessary to provide accurate initial conditions that drive the GEOS-­5 forecasts. To do this, the best estimate of the full, three-dimensional atmospheric state is determined by combining the latest observations and a short-term, 6-­hour forecast—a process known as data assimilation. The GEOS-­5 DAS assimilates more than 5 million observations during each 6-hour assimilation period.These observations are assembled from a number of sources from around the globe, including NASA, NOAA, EUMETSAT (European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), commercial airlines, the US Department of Defense, and many others. Similarly, each observation type has its own sampling characteristics. It can be seen in the animation how different observation types have different strategies. One of the main challenges of data assimilation is to understand how all these observations are alike, how they differ, and how they interact with each other.Funding for the development of the GEOS-5 model and data assimilation system development comes from NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction Program and the NASA Weather Focus Area's contribution to the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation.The GEOS-5 DAS runs at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, which is funded by NASA’s High-End Computing Program.For More Information:http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/http://www.nccs.nasa.gov/images/data_assim_story_072815.pdf ||

animation with traditional colors for chl || Satellite instruments reveal the yearly cycle of plant life on the land and in the water. On land, the images represent the density of plant growth, while in the oceans they show the chlorophyll concentration from tiny, plant-like organisms called phytoplankton. From December to February, during the northern hemisphere winter, plant life in the higher latitudes is minimal and receives little sunlight. However, even in the mid latitudes plants are dormant, shown here with browns and yellows on the land and dark blues in the ocean. By contrast the southern ocean and land masses are at the height of the summer season and plant life is revealed with dark green colors on the land and in the ocean. As the year progresses, the situations reverses, with plant life following the increased sunlight northward, while the southern hemisphere experiences decreased plant actvity during its' winter.Rather than showing a specific year, the animation shows an average yearly cycle by combining data from many satellite instruments and averaging them over multiple years.Data Sources include:Land BioProductivity - VIP01P4 - A long term data record for Vegetation Phenology. http://vip.arizona.edu/ 1980-2010, running 7 day averageOcean Color - GSMChl - a multi-satellite ocean color product made using Level 3, daily, binned imagery from SeaWiFS, MODIS-Aqua, Meris, and Viirs. http://wiki.icess.ucsb.edu/measures/GSM 2003-2010, 29 day running averageCryosphere data are: Sea Ice - AMSR-E/Aqua Daily Sea Ice concentration http://nsidc.org/data/AE_SI12 2002-2011, running 5-day average Snow - IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis http://nsidc.org/data/G02156 2006-2014, running 29 day averageThe supporting static/still data are used to show the permenent cryosphere features. They are: Antarctic Icesheet - LIMA - Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica, this mosaic was created from Landsat images collected primarily during 1999–2003. http://lima.usgs.gov images collected primarily during 1999–2003. Greenland Icesheet - MODIS composite from 2011 - this is a cloud-free mosaic from several images from summer 2011 Summer 2011 Glaciers - GLIMs glacier database http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0272 ||

Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, forming the foundation of the aquatic and marine food webs. Phytoplankton populations can grow explosively creating bright green and blue marble swirls, or blooms, near the surface. This visualization shows global daily averages of suspended particulate inorganic carbon (PIC, known as calcium carbonate or limestone) from July 4, 2002 to May 26, 2014, made with data from Aqua/MODIS. One can see shades of bright turquoise circling the Southern Ocean, a unique and consistent feature characterized by the presence of elevated PIC concentrations near the Sub-Tropical, Sub-Antarctic, and Polar Fronts. Referred to as the "Great Calcite Belt," high PIC concentrations result from large numbers of highly reflective microscopic PIC plates called “coccoliths,” released from calcifying coccolithophores. Such regions of elevated reflectance have been observed each year during austral summer with minor variations from year to year. Many sectors of the Southern Ocean are generally characterized by low concentrations of potentially growth limiting iron (Fe) concentrations. Studies suggest, however, that coccolithophores are well adapted to growth under low ambient iron conditions. ||

We all inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide with every breath. For plants, it's the opposite. Tiny pores on leaves absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen as part of a cellular process that converts sunlight and water into energy. Individually, plants take in small amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, but en masse the world's vegetation behaves like a giant lung that can change the composition of the atmosphere. The visualization below, which is based on data from the MODIS instrument and four years of carbon dioxide measurements from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite, reveals how carbon dioxide concentrations fluctuate due to vegetation cover on land. Here, flashing white squares represent carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Notice a sharp reduction in squares as vegetation thrives during the Northern Hemisphere summer. Conversely, more squares are present in winter as vegetation losses lead to rising carbon dioxide levels across the globe. ||

This color-coded map in Robinson projection displays a progression of changing global surface temperature anomalies from 1880 through 2014. Higher than normal temperatures are shown in red and lower then normal termperatures are shown in blue. The final frame represents the global temperatures 5-year averaged from 2010 through 2014. || NASA Finds 2014 Was Warmest Year in Modern RecordThe year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to an analysis by NASA scientists.The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000. This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet, according to an analysis of surface temperature measurements by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York.In an independent analysis of the raw data, NOAA scientists also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.For understanding climate change, the long-term trend of rising temperatures across the planet is more important than any year’s individual ranking. These rankings can be sensitive to analysis methods and sampling. While 2014 ranks as the warmest year in NASA’s global temperature record, it is statistically close to the values from 2010 and 2005, the next warmest years.Since 1880, the average surface temperature of Earth has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius), a trend that is largely driven by the increase in carbon dioxide and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere. The majority of that warming has occurred in the past three decades.Regional differences in temperature in any year are more strongly affected by weather dynamics than the global mean. For example, in the U.S. in 2014, parts of the Midwest and East Coast were anomalously cool, while Alaska and three western U.S. states – California, Arizona and Nevada – recorded their warmest years on record, according to NOAA, which assesses official U.S. temperature records.The GISTEMP analysis website is located at: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ ||

This visualization of annual global temperature anomalies from 2014 starts with a local view of the United States and then zooms out to the global color-coded map. Blue represents colder then normal temperatures and red represents warmer then normal temperatures. || The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to an analysis by NASA scientists. The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000. This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet, according to an analysis of surface temperature measurements by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York.In an independent analysis of the raw data, NOAA scientists also found 2014 to be the warmest on record.For understanding climate change, the long-term trend of rising temperatures across the planet is more important than any year’s individual ranking. These rankings can be sensitive to analysis methods and sampling. While 2014 ranks as the warmest year in NASA’s global temperature record, it is statistically close to the values from 2010 and 2005, the next warmest years.Since 1880, the average surface temperature of Earth has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius), a trend that is largely driven by the increase in carbon dioxide and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere. The majority of that warming has occurred in the past three decades.Regional differences in temperature in any year are more strongly affected by weather dynamics than the global mean. For example, in the U.S. in 2014, parts of the Midwest and East Coast were anomalously cool, while Alaska and three western U.S. states – California, Arizona and Nevada – recorded their warmest years on record, according to NOAA, which assesses official U.S. temperature records.The GISTEMP analysis website is located at: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ ||

These data visualizations from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation and NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., show how climate models used in the new report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate possible temperature pattern changes throughout the 21st century. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes a report on the consensus view of climate change science about every five to seven years. The first findings of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) were released on Sept. 27, 2013, in the form of the Summary for Policymakers report and a draft of IPCC Working Group 1's Physical Science Basis. The IPCC does not perform new science but instead authors a report that establishes the established understanding of the world's climate science community.The report not only includes observations of the real world but also the results of climate model projections of how the Earth will respond as a system to rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. The IPCC's AR5 relies on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) effort, an international effort among the climate modeling community to coordinate climate change experiments. These visualizations represent the mean output of how of how certain groups of CMIP5 models responded to four different scenarios defined by the IPCC called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). These four RCPs – 2.6, 4.5, 6 and 8.5 – represent a wide range of potential worldwide greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration scenarios for the coming century. The pathways are numbered based on the expected Watts per square meter – essentially a measure of how much heat energy is being trapped by the climate system – each scenario would produce. The pathways are partly based on the ultimate concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The current carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is around 400 parts per million, up from less than 300 parts per million at the end of the 19th century.The carbon dioxide concentrations in the year 2100 for each RCP are:RCP 2.6: 421 ppmRCP 4.5: 538 ppmRCP 6: 670 ppmRCP 8.5: 936 ppmEach visualization represents the mean output of a different number of models for each RCP, because data from all models in the CMIP5 project was not available in the same format for visualization for each RCP. All of the models compare a projection of temperatures from 2006-2099 to a baseline historical average from 1971-2000. Thus, the values shown for each year represent the departure for that year compared to the observed average global surface temperature from 1971-2000. The IPCC report used 1986-2005 as a baseline period, making its reported anomalies slightly different from those shown in the visualizations. ||

This animation shows the projected increase in potential evaporation during the fire season through the year 2100, relative to 1980, based on the combined results of multiple climate models: MERRA data for 1980-2010 and an ensemble of 20 climate models for 2010-2100. The maximum increase across North America is about 1 mm/day by 2100. This concept, potential evaporation, is a measure of drying potential or "fire weather." An average increase of 1 mm/day over the whole year is a big change — 1 mm/day increase in PE is considered to be an "extreme" event for fires, similar to the conditions in Colorado in 2012. By these projections, fire years like 2012 would be the new normal in regions like the western US by the end of the 21st century. ||

Broadcast quality interviews with scientists involved in NASA's Carbon and Climate press briefing. || BROADCAST-QUALITY FOOTAGE: Short interview clips with Jeremy Werdell, the PACE Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.HD footage codec: Apple ProRes 422 || || BROADCAST-QUALITY FOOTAGE: Short interview clips with George Hurtt, a professor at the University of Maryland and the Science Team Leader for NASA's Carbon Monitoring System.HD footage codec: Apple ProRes 422 || || BROADCAST-QUALITY FOOTAGE: Short interview clips with Lesley Ott, a scientist with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterHD footage codec: Apple ProRes 422 ||

George Hurtt, professor at University of Maryland, gives information on NASA's Carbon Monitoring System in advance of the United Nations COP-21 climate meeting in Paris, 2015For complete transcript, click here.Music credit: Rippling Rays by Jon Wygens || Earth’s land and ocean currently absorb about half of all carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, but it’s uncertain whether the planet can keep this up in the future. NASA’s Earth science program works to improve our understanding of how carbon absorption and emission processes work in nature and how they could change in a warming world with increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from human activities. Later this month, the United Nations climate meeting in Paris (Conference of Parties, aka COP-21) will focus on setting limits on future levels of human-produced carbon emissions. NASA hosted a media teleconference at noon EST on Thursday, Nov. 12, to discuss the latest insights into how Earth is responding to rising levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and what this means for our future climate.This video features George Hurtt, lead for NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System, and professor at University of Maryland, discussing the key points he delivered on the telecon. ||

Lesley Ott, research meteorologist in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, discusses how NASA is working to understand the global carbon cycle. Dr. Ott made these points on a media telecon in advance of the United Nations COP-21 climate meeting in Paris, 2015.For complete transcript, click here.Music credit: Piano Dreams by Jon Wygens || Earth’s land and ocean currently absorb about half of all carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, but it’s uncertain whether the planet can keep this up in the future. NASA’s Earth science program works to improve our understanding of how carbon absorption and emission processes work in nature and how they could change in a warming world with increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane emissions from human activities. Later this month, the United Nations climate meeting in Paris (Conference of Parties, aka COP-21) will focus on setting limits on future levels of human-produced carbon emissions.NASA hosted a media teleconference at noon EST on Thursday, Nov. 12, to discuss the latest insights into how Earth is responding to rising levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, and what this means for our future climate.This video features Lesley Ott, research scientist in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, discussing the key points she delivered on the telecon. ||

Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are driving changes in Earth’s climate. But scientists are still trying to answer important questions about how carbon dioxide emissions get absorbed by the land and the ocean — and how this could change in the future. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Annmarie Eldering shares how the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is helping answer these questions on a global scale.For complete transcript, click here. || Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are driving changes in Earth’s climate. But scientists are still trying to answer important questions about how carbon dioxide emissions get absorbed by the land and the ocean — and how this could change in the future. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Annmarie Eldering shares how the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is helping answer these questions on a global scale. ||

Jeremy Werdell, oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, discusses the importance of microscopic plankton in the global carbon cycle. With his colleagues, Jeremy is working to answer important questions about how much carbon dioxide the oceans are absorbing, and how that might change in the future.For complete transcript, click here.Music credit: Molecular by Mark Hawkins || Jeremy Werdell is studying how microscopic plankton in the oceans are responding to our changing climate. As a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, he knows that Earth's oceans and land cover have been doing us a favor. As people burn fossil fuels and clear forests, only half of the carbon dioxide released stays in the atmosphere, warming and altering Earth’s climate. The other half is removed from the air by the planet’s vegetation ecosystems and oceans. But Jeremy and other scientists are still trying to answer important questions about how carbon dioxide emissions get absorbed by the land and the ocean — and how this could change in the future. Later this month, the United Nations climate meeting in Paris (Conference of Parties, aka COP-21) will focus on setting limits on future levels of human-produced carbon emissions. ||