06/11/2018

6 Ways Ordinary People Can Prevent Climate Change, According To Researchers And Advocates

NBC News - Julie Compton

Worried about the environment? Scientists, researchers and advocates share the top changes we can make to be part of the climate change solution.

If you're worried climate change and its impact at home and around the world, focus on your own actions and habits, say environmental advocates. Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters file
In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading international body on climate change researchers, released an alarming report. The study found that countries around the world have just 12 years to reduce global warming before it reaches catastrophic levels.
Now that we know time may be running out, the question is: What can we do about it?

Understand how climate change will impact you
If current global temperatures rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius, as the report suggests, the warming atmosphere will create more extreme weather patterns across the U.S., according to Ben Strauss, chief scientist of Climate Central, an organization that reports on climate change. He says people across the country can expect hotter summers and milder winters, which will have a direct impact on food crops and the survival of wildlife.
“It’s getting hotter, so we can expect many more days above 90 degrees or 95 degrees, depending on where you live,” says Strauss.
In the West, continued wildfires will have a direct impact on air quality and human health, according to Strauss. In the Southwest, he says droughts will lead to water scarcity, while the East and Midwest will experience more torrential rainstorms. Strauss says people in eastern coastal areas, especially in low-lying communities, will see more flooding due to heavier and longer-lasting hurricanes, which will have an impact on the value of their homes. In the Northeast, he says, warmer weather will bring more tick and mosquito-born illnesses. The region will see fewer snowstorms, but the storms will become more intense due to increased moisture in the air.
One thing will surely impact people equally across the country, according to the scientist: intensifying summer heat. “Many more days that are danger days in terms of human health and that are ‘black flag’ days — you get to a certain combination of heat and humidity,” Strauss says.

 What can we do?
Focus on solutions, according to Crystal Chissell, a vice president for Project Drawdown, a coalition of researchers and scientists who are working on climate change solutions.
Chissell says reports of impending doom tend to cause ordinary people to feel hopeless and to shut down.
“We will get a lot further toward solving the problem if we focus on solutions rather than continuing to highlight the problem,” Chissell says.
Project Drawdown recently put together a report highlighting 30 behavioral solutions ordinary people can take to combat climate change. The top three include wasting less food, adopting a plant-rich diet and consuming less energy and water.


6 things you can do to combat climate change, according to advocacy groups

1) Waste less food
Methane from agricultural actives, waste management, and energy use is the second largest cause of climate change behind fossil fuels, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Reducing food waste is the number-one thing consumers can do to significantly lessen their climate impact, according to the Project Drawdown report.
“Food that is disposed of and spoiled creates methane, and that’s why it has an impact on greenhouse gases, because methane is such a strong greenhouse gas,” Chissell says. “And that’s why reducing food waste has such a large impact.”
Food waste occurs when we don’t buy produce because it has blemishes or is misshapen, when we discard food because it is a day past the expiration date, or because we simply never get around to eating it, she says.

2) Eat less factory-farmed red meat
Factory farms feed cows grains, which cause them to release methane into the air through their gases, says Chissell.
“It’s not actually natural to their digestive system so it creates more methane,” Chissell explains.
Chissell says adopting a plant-rich diet, and eating more meat from organic farms where animals are fed natural diets, can help reduce methane. “It’s not even necessary to be a vegan or a vegetarian,” she says, “it’s just reducing the amount of meat that we consume and eating plant-based [foods].”

 3) Consume less energy and water
“It’s absolutely imperative to also reduce energy usage,” says Chissell. “For instance, switching to LED light bulbs — that has a very large impact, as does any measure that can reduce household water use.”
There are a number of actions you can take to reduce water consumption, according to Chissell, including purchasing low-flow shower heads and sink faucets, taking shorter showers and washing full loads of laundry.

4) Call and meet with your representatives
Constituents who do the extra legwork of calling and meeting with their representatives have a huge influence, according to Flannery Winchester, communications coordinator at Citizens' Climate Lobby, a non-partisan advocacy organization that focuses on national policies that address climate change.
“If they’re not communicating with the people who are elected to represent them, then those people are not going to be prioritizing those issues,” Winchester says.
Many people believe their elected officials won’t be swayed by their concerns, says Winchester. But when people actively lobby their representatives, she says, change does happen.
For example, Winchester says voters influenced both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to come together to create the the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group focused on climate change solutions.
“Things really are moving,” says Winchester, “and it’s because people are taking the time to talk to their members of Congress.”

5) Open a dialogue and find common ground
While there is major consensus among scientists that climate change is happening, some people may still doubt it’s real, or see climate change policies as “job killers,” according to Winchester.
How people talk to others about climate change is important to solving the problem, Winchester says. She says it’s imperative to avoid arguing about climate change as if it is a partisan issue.
“Really listen, ask open-ended questions and focus on finding common ground,” Winchester advises. For instance, if someone fears climate change policy will hurt coal industry jobs, re-focus the conversation on how climate change policies can create jobs, she says.
“Focusing on the common ground is the main thing that’s going to make it possible for you to introduce new information into the conversation, because they don’t feel like you’re fighting with them,” Winchester says.

6) Volunteer
A big way to be a part of the solution is to join a nonprofit organization where you live that focuses on helping the environment. Many of these organizations have membership opportunities in states and congressional districts across the country.

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Climate Change: Using Satire To Communicate Science

Undark - *

Research shows that while satire does carry some risks, it can be an effective tool for communication. Scientists are giving it a go.
DigitalVision Vectors via Getty
“We do not care about planet Earth,” four French scientists declared in February in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. If humans are exhausting the planet’s resources, they wrote, it’s Earth that needs to adapt — not us. The authors issued a warning: “Should planet Earth stick with its hardline ideological stance…we will seek a second planet.”
Chapron decided to turn to France’s robust literary tradition of using wit, irony, and exaggeration to expose human failings.
They were joking, of course. Lead author Guillaume Chapron, a quantitative ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, works mainly on conserving wolves and other large carnivores. He does care about the Earth. In fact, he and his coauthors all signed a paper in BioScience last year called “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.”
It was a dire summary of the world’s dwindling resources, signed by more than 15,000 scientists. But Chapron worried the gesture was useless: “My concern was that [the] paper would be published and nothing would change,” he says. Yes, thousands of scientists agreed things were bad. “And then so what? So nothing.”
Against this backdrop, Chapron decided to turn to France’s robust literary tradition of using wit, irony, and exaggeration to expose human failings. “We wanted to show that, basically, people are not ready to adjust their way of life to save the planet,” he says. Chapron doubts most other scientists would treat their topics in this way.
But maybe more of them should. Over a decade’s worth of research shows that while satire does carry some risks, it can be an effective tool for communication. Satire can capture people’s attention and make complex topics accessible to a wider audience. In some circumstances, it can even sway beliefs. If scientists want to communicate with the public about a serious subject, they might try a joke.
To understand how satire can influence an audience, several researchers have looked at climate change. One of them is Paul Brewer, a communications researcher at the University of Delaware, who got his first faculty job around the time Jon Stewart took over hosting “The Daily Show” in 1999. Brewer at first used the show as a teaching tool. Then, because a lot of his students watched it, he realized it might make a good research subject.
Since then, Brewer’s studies of satirical TV news have shown that these programs can affect people’s beliefs. In a 2015 study, Brewer and graduate student Jessica McKnight showed university students a video clip from “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” about climate change, or a control video on another topic. Stewart used jokes and sarcasm to address the subject, while Stephen Colbert spoke ironically, in his usual character of an over-the-top conservative pundit. After seeing either satirical news clip, subjects reported a greater certainty that global warming is happening.
In 2017, Brewer and McKnight looked at a segment from another satirical news show, “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Oliver had pitted 97 climate scientists against 3 climate change deniers to create a “statistically representative climate change debate.” The researchers showed either this clip or a control video to 288 participants. Watching the debate clip increased subjects’ confidence in climate change — as well as their perception that scientists agreed on the issue. The effect was strongest among people who reported less interest in the topic beforehand, Brewer says. “It mattered the most among people who aren’t already engaged with the issue.”
In more recent research that hasn’t been published yet, Brewer has been looking at satirical coverage of other scientific issues including vaccines, evolution, and GMOs. Based on preliminary results, he thinks satire may be especially effective for communicating messages about vaccines.
Although the late-night TV hosts have gotten a lot of research attention, Amy Becker of Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore veered away from satirical news in her study published this summer about “sarcastic content.” She showed university students a video from The Onion, another video by The Weather Channel, or a control video.
Both non-control videos were humorous takes on climate change. But the Onion video had a clear point of view, illustrated by its wry title: “Climate Change Researcher Describes Challenge of Pulling Off Worldwide Global Warming Conspiracy.” In contrast, the Weather Channel video poked fun at people who both do and don’t believe in climate change.
The video from The Onion increased people’s certainty that climate change is happening.

Scientific Studies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Becker found that only the Onion video had an effect. It increased people’s certainty that climate change was happening while also increasing their perception of the magnitude of the problem. As with previous studies, the video only made a difference among people who didn’t already think climate change was an important issue. “It seems that one-sided sarcasm can activate less-interested individuals to engage with the climate change issue,” the authors wrote.
Lauren Feldman, a communication researcher at Rutgers University who studies the media, has some ideas about why satire is effective for delivering messages. For a start, she says, humor gets eyeballs. “One of the chief benefits of satire, and comedy more broadly, is to promote attention in our very crowded, noisy media environment,” she says.
In a 2011 collection of essays on satirical news, Feldman and colleagues published research that found that people who watched more satirical news were more likely to follow news about science and technology, the environment, and global warming. The effect was strongest for people with the lowest levels of formal education. “Comedy and satire help pull people in and help make those topics more accessible,” she says.
Furthermore, people inclined to disagree with an idea may argue less if it’s presented satirically. “Because people are focused more on understanding the joke and processing the humor, they have fewer resources leftover to counter-argue any message that they might disagree with,” Feldman says. “That allows some persuasive messages to kind of seep in and penetrate whereas otherwise they might not.”
So far, research on the subject has mostly assumed that comedians share the values of scientists, Feldman adds. But humor could also manipulate audiences in the opposite direction. “Comedy could just as easily be used to engage people with perspectives that misrepresent or undermine science,” she says.
Another risk: people might not get the joke. A 2009 study found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to think Stephen Colbert’s television persona was genuine. Paul Brewer’s study found the same thing — although, Brewer notes, it didn’t make Colbert’s message any less persuasive than Jon Stewart’s to the overall study group.
Even when people do get the joke, satire can be very polarizing, Feldman says. “It attracts an audience who is already pretty liberal in orientation, and it in many ways preaches to the choir.” This can help mobilize like-minded audiences, but “it can also be really alienating to the other side.” It’s also possible that joking about a subject could make it seem less serious, Feldman says.
“Comedy could just as easily be used to engage people with perspectives that misrepresent or undermine science.”
Not many scientists are using satire to deliver messages. There was a 2011 Biotropica paper recommending that Greece and Spain be reforested and populated with large animals. “Both countries face economic challenges that could be reduced by the revenues from ecotourism,” the authors wrote. “Lions could be reintroduced to Greece … and gorillas might thrive in Spain.”
 The authors wanted to show how conservation efforts often ignore the perspective of people who live in an area. Another paper called “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken” parodied unintelligible scientific writing.
Outside of science, Feldman is now working on a book about how social justice organizations are using comedy to engage the public. Feldman says that so far, the benefits researchers have found in satire are mostly restricted to laboratory settings. She thinks more research is needed to understand how satire affects audiences in the real world. But for writers who are considering satire to get a point across, she says, “I don’t think there’s any harm in experimentation.”
Guillaume Chapron, the author of the satirical warning to Earth, agrees. “The environmental crisis has reached such a scale that it is no longer justifiable to dispense with some communication tools,” he and his coauthors wrote in a follow-up paper.
Chapron doesn’t think satire should replace the traditional ways that scientists communicate facts and research. But when it comes to messages that are important for policy decisions, he thinks satire has a role. It’s naive of scientists to assume that their data alone are enough to change anything, Chapron says. “Facts do not tell you what you have to do.”
He admits the reaction to his satirical paper wasn’t earth-shattering. William Ripple and the other authors of the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” letter called Chapron’s paper “humorous, refreshing, and potentially effective.” Chapron has heard about some readers who are still talking about the paper in their labs, he says. He’s heard of others who thought his paper shouldn’t have been published in the first place, or that it damages the credibility of academia.
“Of course it makes people uncomfortable,” he says. “But that’s the role of satire.”

 *Elizabeth Preston is a freelance writer whose work can be found in New Scientist, Discover, Quanta, The Atlantic, and STAT News, among other publications.

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Indigenous Poets Read Urgent Climate Message On A Melting Glacier

Grist - 

As Greenland’s glaciers melt and flow into the sea, Pacific island nations are on the receiving end of some of that water. It’s a familiar story about climate change: One nation crumbles into the ocean; others risk drowning under rising sea levels.
It’s also the backdrop for a unique artistic collaboration between two indigenous poets from opposite ends of the earth. Last summer, these women — who had met for the first time days earlier — stood side by side, one dressed in black, the other in white, reciting a poem they’d written together:


Rise: From One Island To Another
Two indigenous poets, one from the Marshall Islands and another from Greenland, 
meet at the source of our rising seas to share a moment of solidarity.

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner* traveled from the Marshall Islands in Micronesia to Greenland’s capital city Nuuk where she met Inuk poet Aka Niviâna*. Together, they embarked with a small film crew to a remote spot on southern Greenland’s ice sheet where they recited their poem “Rise” on top of a crevasse-scarred melting glacier.
With dramatic orchestration and mournful cries sounding urgently in the film’s background, the poets tell of the lands of their respective ancestors, the sunken volcanoes and hidden icebergs. They speak of angry seas, evoking the legends of sisters turned to stone, and Sassuma Arnaa, Mother of the Sea.
Dan Lin / Rise
Addressing one another as “sister of ice and snow” and “sister of ocean and sand,” Niviâna and Jetnil-Kijiner ceremoniously exchange gifts of shells and stones in a story that is cinematically beautiful, but whose message is stark:

Rise
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner | Aka Niviâna

 Sister of ice and snow
I’m coming to you
from the land of my ancestors,
from atolls, sunken volcanoes–undersea descent
of sleeping giants

Sister of ocean and sand,
I welcome you
to the land of my ancestors
–to the land where they sacrificed their lives
to make mine possible
–to the land
of survivors.

I’m coming to you
from the land my ancestors chose.
Aelon Kein Ad,
Marshall Islands,
a country more sea than land.
I welcome you to Kalaallit Nunaat,
Greenland,
the biggest island on earth.

Sister of ice and snow,
I bring with me these shells
that I picked from the shores
of Bikini atoll and Runit Dome

Sister of ocean and sand,
I hold these stones picked from the shores of Nuuk,
the foundation of the land I call my home.

With these shells I bring a story of long ago
two sisters frozen in time on the island of Ujae,
one magically turned into stone
the other who chose that life
to be rooted by her sister’s side.
To this day, the two sisters
can be seen by the edge of the reef,
a lesson in permanence.

With these rocks I bring
a story told countless times
a story about Sassuma Arnaa, Mother of the Sea,
who lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean.

This is a story about
the guardian of the Sea.
She sees the greed in our hearts,
the disrespect in our eyes.
Every whale, every stream,
every iceberg
are her children.

When we disrespect them
she gives us what we deserve,
a lesson in respect.

Do we deserve the melting ice?
the hungry polar bears coming to our islands
or the colossal icebergs hitting these waters with rage
Do we deserve
their mother,
coming for our homes
for our lives?

From one island to another
I ask for solutions.
From one island to another
I ask for your problems

Let me show you the tide
that comes for us faster
than we’d like to admit.
Let me show you
airports underwater
bulldozed reefs, blasted sands
and plans to build new atolls
forcing land
from an ancient, rising sea,
forcing us to imagine
turning ourselves to stone.

Sister of ocean and sand,
Can you see our glaciers groaning
with the weight of the world’s heat?
I wait for you, here,
on the land of my ancestors
heart heavy with a thirst
for solutions
as I watch this land
change
while the World remains silent.

Sister of ice and snow,
I come to you now in grief
mourning landscapes
that are always forced to change

first through wars inflicted on us
then through nuclear waste
dumped
in our waters
on our ice
and now this.

Sister of ocean and sand,
I offer you these rocks, the foundation of my home.
On our journey
may the same unshakable foundation
connect us,
make us stronger,
than the colonizing monsters
that to this day devour our lives
for their pleasure.
The very same beasts
that now decide,
who should live
who should die.

Sister of ice and snow,
I offer you this shell
and the story of the two sisters
as testament
as declaration
that despite everything
we will not leave.
Instead
we will choose stone.
We will choose
to be rooted in this reef
forever.

From these islands
we ask for solutions.
From these islands

we ask
we demand that the world see beyond
SUV’s, ac’s, their pre-packaged convenience
their oil-slicked dreams, beyond the belief
that tomorrow will never happen, that this
is merely an inconvenient truth.
Let me bring my home to yours.
Let’s watch as Miami, New York,
Shanghai, Amsterdam, London,
Rio de Janeiro, and Osaka
try to breathe underwater.
You think you have decades
before your homes fall beneath tides?
We have years.
We have months
before you sacrifice us again
before you watch from your tv and computer screens waiting
to see if we will still be breathing
while you do nothing.

 My sister,
From one island to another
I give to you these rocks
as a reminder
that our lives matter more than their power
that life in all forms demands
the same respect we all give to money
that these issues affect each and everyone of us
None of us is immune
And that each and everyone of us has to decide
if we
will
rise

Filming on top of a melting glacier wasn’t physically easy, Jetnil-Kijiner said. And yet, when she found herself face-to-face with a physical body that threatens to submerge her ancestral homeland, she felt reverence, not anger.
“It just felt like I was meeting an elder,” she recalled. “I was just in awe of the ice, of how large it was, how expansive, how beautiful.”
Niviâna, who is from Greenland’s far north, was also visiting the southern ice sheet for the first time. She was struck by the change in landscape. She described the shock of seeing a boulder fall near their campsite after it was dislodged by melting ice.
“It was a huge rock,” Niviâna said. “It was really overwhelming to see how rapidly the ice was melting.”
Dan Lin / Rise
That melting ice is a reality — not something that can be denied. But the film was not made for climate deniers. “I’m not here to convince someone else of my humanity or the reality of our situation,” Jetnil-Kijiner said. “I’m just trying to create a different sort of experience that speaks more truth to my own.”
For Dan Lin, the director of the film Rise, the underlying science behind the story is important. But at its core, he says it’s a project about climate change as viewed through the eyes of two indigenous female poets. Together, they weave a story of beautiful yet fragile landscapes and of resilient peoples in the face of injustice.
Lin hopes the collaboration will build an awareness of the connections between seemingly disparate communities.
Dan Lin / Rise
The idea for the video grew out of a conversation Jetnil-Kijiner had with 350.org founder Bill McKibben at a climate change conference. McKibben (who is a Grist board member) suggested she recite a poem on a glacier. Jetnil-Kijiner liked the idea, but was uncomfortable using another country’s landscape and climate crisis as a backdrop for her own story.
McKibben put Jetnil-Kijiner in touch with glaciologist Jason Box who introduced her to Niviâna. Despite the distances that separated them, the poets began an online correspondence which led to their creative partnership.
It wasn’t until the poets finally met in person, by which time the poem was mostly finished, that they really got know each other.
This unlikely sisterhood, conceived of in water and ice, evolved on paper and by email. More poetically, Jetnil-Kijiner reflected, “It felt like we wrote our relationship into being.”

*Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is a poet of Marshallese ancestry. She received international acclaim through her performance at the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York in 2014. Her writing and performances have been featured by CNN, Democracy Now, Huffington Post, and more. In February 2017, the University of Arizona Press published her first collection of poetry, Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter. Her work has recently evolved and begun to inhabit gallery and performance art spaces – her work has been curated by the Honolulu Biennial in Hawai’i in February 2017, then the Smithsonian art lab ‘Ae Kai in July of 2017, and most recently the upcoming Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia in November 2018. Kathy also co-founded the non-profit Jo-Jikum, dedicated to empowering Marshallese youth to seek solutions to climate change and other environmental impacts threatening their home island. She has been selected as one of 13 Climate Warriors by Vogue in 2015 and the Impact Hero of the Year by Earth Company in 2016. She received her Master’s in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

 *Aka Niviâna is a Inuk writer and this is her on-screen debut. Aka started doing poetry with a wish to create nuanced conversations about not only climate change, but also colonialism and indigenous peoples rights. She believes in the importance of representation and the inclusion of black, brown and indigenous peoples.

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Earth Minute: Why Does NASA Study Earth?

NASA - Earth Minute

NASA isn't all about interplanetary exploration; in fact, the agency spends much of its time studying our home planet. This fun whiteboard animation series explains Earth science to the science-curious.


 Why Does NASA Study Earth?


Earth is a complex, dynamic system we do not fully understand. To learn more about it, NASA, as the agency with access to space, was tasked with launching the first weather satellite back in 1960. Today, NASA uses satellites, aircraft and even an occasional boat to study our planet's air, land and water. It's called "Earth system science" and we are trying to answer some big questions: How is the global Earth system changing? What causes these changes? How will Earth change in the future? And what we learn benefits society through applications such as weather forecasting, freshwater availability and disaster response.

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My Name Is Aerosol


Aerosols are minute solid and liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere. Examples include desert dust, sea salt from ocean spray, volcanic ash, smoke from wildfires and emissions from the burning of coal and oil. These tiny particles affect weather and climate, cause hazy skies and can pose serious health hazards. Aerosols also can act as sites for chemical reactions, such as those that lead to the destruction of stratospheric ozone, i.e., the ozone hole.

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Cloudy Forecast


Clouds are complicated when it comes to climate science, as they both warm and cool Earth. NASA is studying these atmospheric masses of condensed water vapor with satellites and aircraft, and you can, too, with a citizen science app: http://observer.globe.gov.

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Greenland Ice


Located in the Arctic near the North Pole, the island of Greenland is covered by a massive ice sheet three times the size of Texas and a mile deep on average. Greenland is warming almost twice as fast as Antarctica, which is causing the ice to melt and raise global sea levels. NASA is monitoring Greenland’s ice sheet from space to the ocean floor to provide data for scientists studying the global impact of all this melting ice.

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Sea Level Rise


For over 20 years NASA has been tracking the ocean's global surface topography to understand the important role it plays in our lives. Climate change is causing our ocean to warm and glaciers to melt, resulting in sea level rise. Since 1880, the global sea level has risen 8 inches; by 2100, it is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet.

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Dishing The Dirt


NASA doesn’t study just the stars and planets; it is also concerned about the soil beneath your feet. Studying the moisture in the top two inches of the soil from space with a satellite named "SMAP" can help weather forecasters predict flash floods, farmers grow more crops and communities plan for drought.

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Blowin' In The Wind


Since 1978, NASA has been monitoring ocean winds via scatterometry, the data of which have improved weather and hurricane forecasts and helped us better understand global climate patterns. Knowing which way the wind is blowing over water is critical for industries such as shipping and fishing, and it helps predict unusual weather phenomena such as El Niño.

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Scale In The Sky


The force of gravity not only keeps us from floating away, it also lets NASA study Earth’s water and ice from space. Using a pair of twin satellites named "GRACE," we can monitor where our planet’s water is going, even when it is underground.

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Gas Problem


Greenhouse gases are vital to life on Earth, but the growing concentration of certain gases, such as carbon dioxide, is throwing the planet's delicate balance out of whack. NASA is on the case, studying carbon dioxide on a global scale and its effects on our weather and climate.

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Earth Has A Fever


Earth's average temperature has risen over 1º F in the past century. It is projected to rise an additional 3º to 10º over the next 100 years. Data from NASA's global network of satellites, airborne missions and surface-monitoring systems is used to build climate models that help us understand the causes and effects of global warming.

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Usual Suspects


Before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural events such as volcanic activity and solar energy variations. These natural events still contribute to climate change today, but their impact is very small compared to the growing levels of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels. NASA’s ongoing Earth science missions, research and computer models help us better understand the long-term global changes occurring today through both natural and manmade causes.

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Mission To Earth


NASA doesn't explore just outer space! Since 1959, with the launch of the first weather satellite, NASA has been studying our home planet on a global scale. It monitors Earth's vital signs via satellites and airplanes, sends scientists to the far corners of the land and under the ocean, and develops computer models of Earth's climate processes. Why? Because Earth is the only planet that nearly eight billion people call "home sweet home."

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