all right good evening everybody thank you all for coming to the NASA hyperwall
I know it's not just all about the books right everybody's here to learn
something, so thank you for sitting and listening to this I'm just here to give
an overview of what we do at our science at NASA and a lot of people don't know
that NASA has an earth science division and what we do is, next slide please,
we use the unique vantage point of space currently our 23 Earth observing
satellites to look at different properties of our global world some of
these are focused on the biosphere some of these are focused on the cryosphere
and we can study many aspects of the Earth's system and at NASA we use this
information to explore and that exploration leads to discovery which
leads to research so our overarching goal is to understand and protect our
home planet for societal benefit, next slide, so I just want to give you an
overview since our science at NASA is about to turn 50 we started to talk
about some of the major highlights of our findings both basic and applied
research over the years, um, and what we realized in doing this is that some of
what we do some of the images we're able to project some of the predictions were
able to make with models actually looks somewhat like artwork, so we can do
things like make basic research observations of aerosols and different
types of aerosols and use them and feed them into climate and weather prediction
and that's what you're seeing here so this is a simulation of aerosols during
the 2017 hurricane season, you can see a number of different aerosols on the
bottom you could also track the Hurricanes by name, next slide, and so one
of the most iconic stories I think to come out of NASA mat of science in
general was actually detailing the hole in the ozone layer in the 70s and how
this led to things like the Montreal Protocol and actually led to it doing
things like monitoring the progress of the recovery of the whole in the
ozone layer it is very important for shielding Earth from a lot of harmful
radiation and how the effect of the Montreal Protocol led to its recovery
over time and it's been relatively stable since the
1990s but I think satellite data are absolutely critical in getting that
global observation and when coupled with in situ observations no matter what
aspect of the Earth System properties were looking at it's very important for
giving us motion forward scientifically, next slide
so one of the other I think
truly iconic animations and something were able to detail over time is looking
at changes in ice cover at the poles and this shows you the annual Arctic sea ice
minimum starting in 1979 with the graph that overlays and shows the big drops
over the last ten years and so to be able to track this change over time
allows us to not only explore spatially but temporally rate so what we're able
to do is identify changes and long term trends in our climate, next slide
Thanks
so the other animation I like to show is 20 years of Earth's biosphere now if you
know anything about biology on the earth it supports a tremendous economy
worldwide both on land and in the ocean and what I like about this animation is
it's like watching the Earth breathe, okay, you can actually see many changes
over time and in addition you can actually understand the impacts of
atmospheric phenomenon on our land and on our oceans, next slide
so one of the
other pieces that's very important and in 10 minutes I don't have enough time
to show you all of what we do at NASA but taking this time series of
information, all of this spatial information, all of the temporal
information and actually using it for a predictive capability is really
important and so this is a GEOS-5 model run different properties shown in each
panel and it can be used to look at changes in the atmosphere and those
impacts of the changes in the atmosphere on the rest of the Earth system over
time and this is a constantly evolving animation because we initialize the
models with actual data and then can use some of it to do hind
casting and forecasting, next slide
so the only thing that's I think what's really
unique at NASA is not only having the research programs embedded with some of
the satellite information but we also do Applied Sciences okay and that means we
take all of our research findings all of our research data products and try to
transition them into the hands of managers conservationists and you listen
very closely to see if there's something that they need that they're not getting
that we can actually produce and so one of the things that I think is important
to look at over time is not only the coverage and recovery of things like
fires and this is Yellowstone but actually looking at the lasting effects
of things like wildfires and actually feeding that information forward to
firefighters as things are going on, so this is the burn recovery in Yellowstone
and you can really see how some of the fires caused scars that take a long time
to recover if at all next slide
thank you so one of the other things I thought was really unique to show was
some of you may remember in 2018 and why there were a number of volcanic
eruptions for a good chunk of the year and so what you're seeing right now is
sort of the before picture before the Kilauea eruptions of 2018 and then
you'll see some thermal imagery that shows you the actual eruptions and then
you'll see another LandSat shot that shows you what the area looked like
after, we can feed this information forward to managers on the ground and
policymakers it can be very helpful and they're planning for the future and
their recovery, so while we don't really do any management or policymaking at
NASA a lot of what we do is policy relevant and we're constantly looking
for those synergies, next slide, okay and so I love this one this is actually GPM
data and I remember one day this summer there was a horrific day of rainstorms
in Washington and it just so happens that GPM was passing over and we were
able to catch her capture in the Washington DC region this horrible
deluge of rain that left us with like four inches of rain in one day
and so Gail Skofronik-Jackson the GPM program scientist said you know we
happen to catch this and she said this one forward and I think Thomas Zurbuchen
but--can tweeted it out that day and we just thought it was what a what a chain
of events to actually capture the local real rainstorm and get a picture of it
from one of our Earth observing satellites and of course one of the
things that NASA does is feed a lot of this information into weather prediction
next slide,
okay so it's your planet right, we're turning 50 it's one of those
things that you say well there are a lot of things that we could still do and
we're always thinking about that we have a lot of new missions and formulation
and a lot in development and I know around the corner a lot of you have
queued up, next slide, for what's what we call our new Earth at Night book and just
because the earth is dark doesn't mean there aren't things going on that we can
measure and understand we've actually used this nightlights
product and fed this information forward not for just managing recovery from
natural disasters but also doing things like tracking illegal unreported and
unregulated fishing so these images even at night when things look serene and
very quiet can be very useful for our science, so with that I will say thank
you I hope you all stay here and learn something more about Earth science at NASA