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We often
refer to Earth as the Blue Marble.

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But the ocean isn't just blue.

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Tiny plants and algae called phytoplankton
have a number of pigments inside of them

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that they use for photosynthesis,

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and which is the process of taking carbon
dioxide and creating cellular material.

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Just like land plants do.

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And if you have enough phytoplankton
in the water,

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you'll start seeing green swirls.

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Current missions only measure one green.

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The advance of PACE is.

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It measures all of the greens.

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And this doesn't sound like much,
but that information, where you can see

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all of the different shades of green,
allow scientists like myself

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to actually tell you
what phytoplankton community is there.

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And you care about this
because not every community is the same.

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Some are beneficial.

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They provide food and oxygen.

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Others close beaches.

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So we really want to know where they are
and when they appear and the impact

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of all of this.

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Pace was launched less

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than three months ago and it's already
teaching us things about our home planet.

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It's a mission that's exciting
because pace makes the invisible visible.

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It's flying hundreds of miles above Earth,
and yet it's designed

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to see microscopic things in the ocean
their phytoplankton,

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tiny plants and algae that form the base
of the marine food chain, the atmosphere,

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the aerosols, things like dust,
sea salt, pollen, volcanic ash.

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And it's doing so every single day.

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Pace has specialized instruments

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that can describe
what's blowing around in our atmosphere.

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And when I say blowing around, I'm
talking about these tiny particles

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like smoke, wildfires, pollen,

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sea spray dust, all of those things.

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And you care about this
because they inform on air quality.

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You know, you don't want to be breathing
all of these things.

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And so it's really nice
to have eyes in the sky telling you

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what you're actually breathing.

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And then there are also
these amazing interactions here.

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Aerosols
enter interact with phytoplankton.

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Believe it or not.

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And phytoplankton
can actually create clouds

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and aerosols and clouds
of course interact.

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And all of these interactions
really describe

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how our home planet
is responding to a change in climate.

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No matter where any of us live,

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we're more than likely experienced
some kind of extreme event recently.

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Whether it's been a drought, a wildfire,

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heavy storms, heavy snowfall,
things like that.

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This is a result of our changing climate
and the beauty of pace

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and the fact that it's a complete Earth
science mission by studying land,

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oceans and atmospheres
is this really provides another

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great tool in our toolbox
to understand the impacts of all of these

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and even use the information from Pace
to put it into these really elegant models

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that can help predict or better understand
why these events are occurring.