JPL BLOGS
Inside Views on Outer Space
Hear from scientists, engineers and other experts as they offer a fascinating look at JPL missions, science and history.
My Big Fat Planet | February 19, 2013
Ask the Expert - Is It too Late to Reduce Climate Change?
In this new series on "Big Fat Planet," we will answer selected questions about Earth's climate submitted by readers. Recently, a reader asked: "Is there still time to reduce climate change, or is it too late?" The following answer is from Dr. Chip Miller, a researcher specializing in remote sensing of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is principal investigator of the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) and was deputy principal investigator for NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite mission, which was designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide from space.
This is a question that has been asked many times and many studies have investigated similar questions: What level of climate change is "acceptable"? What constitutes "dangerous interference" in the climate system?
The short answer is that it's not too late to act, but our past actions may have already locked in certain outcomes and action is needed to avoid more substantial impacts in the future.
In the 1990s and early 2000s it was generally felt that a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere compared to pre-industrial levels -- that is, CO2 concentrations increasing to about 500 parts per million (ppm) - was "acceptable." However, the series of studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found that as climate models improve, average worldwide surface temperature is projected to increase well beyond the "acceptable" level of 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. (See the IPCC website for the reports and most recent information.)
Jim Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies) has been one of the more outspoken advocates of curtailing CO2 emissions immediately to return atmospheric CO2 levels to about 350 ppm (the level of carbon dioxide that was in the air in the late 1980s). The challenge here is that even if human emissions of CO2 were cut to zero today, there is an inertia in the climate system that would continue for hundreds to thousands of years as the system attempts to re-equilibrate. (See Hansen's Royal Society paper, "Climate change and trace gases," for more details.)
Michael Oppenheimer [Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton University] and colleagues have taken a different approach to assessing climate change risk - they define the likelihood of certain environmental outcomes for different levels of atmospheric CO2 accumulation. (See their 2002 Science paper, "Dangerous climate impacts and the Kyoto Protocol," for a look at three potential outcomes at different CO2 levels.)
Further reading:
“Perception of climate change,” J. Hansen, M. Sato & R. Ruedy, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (6 August 2012); doi: 10.1073/pnas.1205276109.
This post was written for "My Big Fat Planet," a blog hosted by Amber Jenkins on NASA's Global Climate Change site.
TAGS: CLIMATE, EARTH, SCIENCE,
My Big Fat Planet | January 10, 2013
In Essence: Science Boiled Down
An interesting recent paper from Dr. Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and colleagues finds that the bottom of the Arctic Ocean controls the pattern of sea ice thousands of feet above on the water’s surface. The seafloor topography exerts its control not only locally, in the Bering, Chukchi, Beaufort, Barents and Greenland Seas, but also spanning hundreds to thousands of miles across the Arctic Ocean.
How? The seafloor influences the distribution of cold and warm waters in the Arctic Ocean where sea ice can preferentially grow or melt. Geological features on the ocean bottom also guide how the sea ice moves, along with influence from surface winds.
Interestingly, the study also links the bottom of the Arctic Ocean with cloud patterns up in the sky. The ocean bottom affects sea ice cover, which affects the amount of vapor coming from the surface of the ocean out into the air, which in turn influences cloud cover.
The researchers, who also come from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Applied Physics Laboratory and the National/Naval Ice Center in the U.S., use sea ice maps taken from space with NASA’s QuickSCAT satellite, as well as measurements from drifting buoys in the Arctic Ocean. They compare the sea ice and seafloor topography patterns to identify the connection between the two.
Bottom line:
Since the seafloor does not change significantly over many years, sea ice patterns can form repeatedly and persist around certain underwater geological features. So computer models need to incorporate these features in order to improve their forecasts of how ice cover will change over the short- and long-term. This ‘memory’ of the underwater topography could help refine our predictions of what will happen to ice in the Arctic as the climate changes.
Source: “Seafloor Control on Sea Ice,” S. V. Nghiem, P. Clemente-Colon, I.G. Rigor, D.K. Hall & G. Neumann, Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography, Volumes 77-80, pp 52-61 (2012).
This post was written for "My Big Fat Planet," a blog hosted by Amber Jenkins on NASA's Global Climate Change site.
TAGS: EARTH, SCIENCE, CLIMATE,
My Big Fat Planet | January 10, 2013
Pick of the Pics
This is a new image of our planet at night, as taken by a new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite orbiting above us. Scientists recently unveiled this global composite image (and the one below), constructed using cloud-free nighttime images. They show the glow of natural and man-made phenomena across the planet in greater detail than ever seen before. City lights can tell us about how humans have spread across the globe.
Many satellites are equipped to look at Earth during the day, when they can observe our planet fully illuminated by the sun. But with a new sensor onboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite launched last year, scientists now can observe Earth's atmosphere and surface during nighttime hours.
For more Earth at night images, see this article.
This post was written for "My Big Fat Planet," a blog hosted by Amber Jenkins on NASA's Global Climate Change site.
TAGS: EARTH, SCIENCE, CLIMATE,
JPL | October 15, 2010
Taking On Water Resource Issues
Worldwide today, it is estimated that nearly 1.1 billion people live without access to adequate water supplies and about 2.6 billion people lack adequate water sanitation. Improved understanding of water processes at global and regional scales is essential for sustainability.
Researchers at JPL recently launched the Western Water Resource Solutions website to highlight activities that apply NASA expertise and data to water resource issues in the western United States.
One focus area for this new site is the hydrologic cycle and using global satellite observations of the Earth to improve our understanding of water processes on a regional and local level. The western United States is expected to bear the brunt of impacts to water resource availability because of changing precipitation patterns, increasing temperatures, and a growing population. California is already starting to feel the impacts and is taking action to develop new adaptive management practices to ensure a safe and reliable water supply, while maintaining healthy ecosystems throughout the state.
NASA researchers at Ames Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Marshall Space Flight Center are currently working with water managers to apply NASA expertise and data to water resource issues in California. The project partners with universities, agencies and other stakeholders, to utilize information from a number of sources, including existing ground observations and models.
This project is only one of several NASA initiatives aimed at providing actionable scientific information on water quality and the water balance worldwide. These other projects include development of better estimates of snow pack, groundwater monitoring, soil moisture and evapotranspiration, water quality, and monitoring fragile levee systems.
In addition to raising awareness about current water resource challenges, the new website highlights NASA's capability to use satellite and airborne data to help solve some of these challenges.
Learn more about the Western Water Resource Solution Group at: http://water.jpl.nasa.gov/
Written as part of Blog Action Day 2010
TAGS: EARTH, CLIMATE, BLOG, ACTION DAY, WATER RESEOURCES, NASA
JPL | October 15, 2009
Tackling Clouds for Improved Predictions of Future Climate
Today, JPL Earth scientist Hui Su joins thousands of other bloggers in more than 130 countries around the world for the Blog Action Day '09 Climate Change.
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day, with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. The theme of this year's event, climate change, affects us all and will be the topic of international climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December.
As a world leader in studying Earth's climate, NASA researchers play a vital role in shaping our understanding of global change. In today's post, Su discusses the critical role clouds play in climate, and why learning more about them is a key to predicting how our climate will change in the future. For more information on Blog Action Day, visit: http://www.blogactionday.org .
Clouds are among the most fascinating natural phenomena and have inspired countless works of literature and art. Their ever-changing forms make them a great challenge to atmospheric scientists working to predict how our climate will change in the future in response to increasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Clouds occur at many different heights in our atmosphere and take many different forms. There are three main types of clouds: stratus, cumulus and cirrus. Stratus clouds are low clouds, usually within 2 kilometers (7,000 feet) above the surface. They look like a gray blanket, extending thousands of kilometers across the sky. Cumulus clouds look like puffy cotton balls and extend vertically for large distances. The third type is wispy and feathery-looking cirrus. Cirrus clouds are usually high in the sky, about 7 kilometers (23,000 feet) above the surface. These three types of clouds have different impacts on Earth's climate due to their unique abilities to reflect sunlight and trap heat radiated from Earth's surface.
Stratus clouds can effectively block sunlight from reaching the surface; therefore, they act as an umbrella that cools Earth. Cirrus clouds are relatively transparent to sunlight but can trap terrestrial radiation, JUST AS carbon dioxide does, so they have a net warming effect on Earth. Cumulus clouds can block sunlight and also trap terrestrial radiation. Their net effect varies greatly depending on their actual heights and thicknesses.
Climate scientists have long struggled to quantify how different types of clouds change when global warming occurs. For example, an increase in stratus clouds may cool Earth's surface, compensating for global warming; while an increase in cirrus clouds may further warm Earth's surface, exacerbating global warming. Up to now, scientists have not been able to come to a consensus as to whether stratus, cumulus or cirrus clouds will increase or decrease as global temperatures increase.
A key advancement in cloud studies in recent years has been the availability of global satellite observations of clouds, especially the measurements of clouds at different heights provided by NASA satellites like CloudSat, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). These observations are allowing scientists to better simulate clouds in climate models, which are the primary tools climate scientists use to predict future climate change. Up till now, the dynamic nature of clouds has made them very difficult to simulate in current climate models. But by applying space data, we at JPL are working closely with modelers to improve cloud simulations and thereby improve predictions of future climate change.
To learn more about JPL's research in this field and the CloudSat mission, visit: http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/home .
TAGS: EARTH, CLIMATE, BLOG, ACTION DAY, CLOUDSAT, CLOUDS
