Interviewer: Carbon dioxide is vital for life on Earth but an overload of greenhouse gas
is driving one of the most serious problems facing our planet, climate change.
In just two weeks world leaders will come together in one of the most important
climate conferences ever, to set new global limits
on carbon emissions amid a slowing global warming.
Here to tell us more about this is Peter Griffith at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Thanks for joining us.
Peter: Thanks for having me on.
Interviewer: So world leaders will meeting in a couple of weeks to tackle climate change
issues, what are NASA's observations telling us about how Earth is changing?
Peter: NASA's observations are telling us that the Earth is warming.
Now we have a decades long view from
satellites assimilated into models.
This particular one is showing the global surface
warming compared to the mid
warming compared to the mid 20th century climatic average.
So you can see by the time we end up in 2014, particularly in the high latitudes
and polar regions, that the earth has warmed up quite a bit.
And we know why this is. We know it's because of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere.
Interviewer: So NASA has a new global portrait of carbon dioxide
the largest human produced driver of climate of climate change.
Show us the view of the planet and what is the data telling us?
Peter: So this is the first year of data from the
Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
Prior to the satellite we had
scattered ground station around the world but now with this
view from space we can see how high CO2
concentration in the atmosphere at the end of the winter shown in red
is being absorbed
taken up by the plants of the land and the oceans.
And we can start to tease out what parts of the planet
are responsible the emissions
and for the removal of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Interviewer: Scientist have been talking about the mystery of carbon dioxide for years.
Half of all emissions stay in the atmosphere but where does the rest go?
This next animation will show you plant growth on the land and in the oceans.
We can see the seasonal fluctuations as the winter, and spring, and summer
progress from year to year.
Observe that the plants of the land and ocean
are taking up this CO2.
There are some areas where CO2 fertilization
is taking place where the plants are growing a little bit faster.
Other areas that are regrowth forest like the eastern United States
that are especially good at taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.
This is a good thing, without what the biosphere is doing
there would be even more CO2 in the atmosphere from human activates.
Interviewer: Now what is NASA doing to better understand how are Earth is changing?
Peter: NASA has a fleet of satellites that are observing the Earth
from the unique vantage point of space.
And we can simulate observations from these satellites.
This particular view is of carbon dioxide
moving through the atmosphere and we can see the areas.
Whether it's from cities or forest fires
from fossil fuel emissions were the carbon is being added to the atmophere
and where it is moving as the winds blow the
around the planet.
Interviewer: Tell us where can we learn more?
Peter: You can on the internet go to
nasa.gov/earth or follow #EarthRightNow
on Twitter or on Facebook.
Interviewer: Thanks so much for joining us.
Peter: You're welcome