Friday, July 26th, 2013
Plants grow and thrive through photosynthesis, a process that converts sunlight into energy. During photosynthesis, plants emit what is called fluorescence – light invisible to the naked eye but detectable by satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth. NASA scientists have now established a method to turn this satellite data into global maps of the
Friday, July 26th, 2013
Climate change is expected to amplify both droughts and wildfires across the western United States. A new study shows that the effects of drought and fire work in combination, such that forests experiencing drought will see more dead trees in the aftermath of wildfires.
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released the National Stormwater Calculator, an innovative addition to the administration’s virtual climate resilience toolkit. EPA’s new calculator will help property owners, developers, landscapers, and urban planners make informed land-use decisions to protect local waterways from pollution caused by stormwater
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013
In Indonesia, land-clearing blazes dot the countryside. Fires for clearing land have been outlowed for all but the smallest landowners, but the “slash-and-burn” practice still persists despite cloaking Southeast Asia in toxic pollution for weeks. Better and more available satellite technology is helping identify culprits behind land-clearing blazes in Indonesia. Unprecedented levels of air pollution
Friday, July 19th, 2013
A new study by Indian glaciologists suggests black carbon from forest fires may affect the “reflectance” or albedo of glaciers in a manner that reduces their mass balance. The report indicates that the change in reflectance in 2009 was higher than in any other year from 2000 to 2012 and could only be explained by
Thursday, July 18th, 2013
The first global map of vegetation from the recently launched Proba-V has been unveiled, demonstrating that the minisatellite is on track to continue a 15-year legacy of global vegetation monitoring from space. Proba-V is designed to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days. The data can also be used
Thursday, July 11th, 2013
A new study finds that air pollution during the 90’s caused the combined loss of more than 2.5 billion years of life for the 500 million residents of Northern China. The study, published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, found that residents in Southern China lived an average of five years longer than
Monday, July 1st, 2013
Having looked back at Earth from outer space, I have seen just how fragile our home planet is – and I’m committed to doing everything I can to help protect it.Yesterday, President Obama announced an ambitious Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution and put us on a more environmentally sustainable course. At NASA, where
Friday, June 28th, 2013
The biomass of the northern hemisphere’s forests has been mapped with greater precision than ever before thanks to satellites, improving our understanding of the carbon cycle and our prediction of Earth’s future climate. Accurately measuring forest biomass and how it varies are key elements for taking stock of forests and vegetation. Since forests assist in
Wednesday, June 26th, 2013
A study published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics confirms the importance President Obama is placing on cutting hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), as reflected in his climate speech yesterday and his new climate action plan. The study calculates that replacing high-GWP HFCs with low-GPW alternatives, as the U.S. and many other countries have proposed under the Montreal
