The G-8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit address on global climate change specifically recognized “the growing demand for Earth observation data” and pledged to “accelerate efforts within the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)”.
There are over six billion people on this planet, 193 countries and more than five thousand languages. No matter the nationality or language spoken or the location, everyone is inextricably linked and hence affected by global environmental change.
The GEO and some 80 leading scientific institutes, intergovernmental organizations and national ministries have joined forces to start building a global Biodiversity Observation Network for monitoring and assessing the world’s species and ecosystems in order to prevent their further destruction.
Among the biggest challenges the world faces today are the climate crisis and the broader issues of environmental sustainability raised in books such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, 2004). Part of the solution to this problem depends on climate science, breakthrough technologies, and policy changes.
The NOAA – David Johnson Award is presented by the National Space Club in honor of the first administrator of what was to become the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS).
The application of radio-echo sounding (RES) to thickness measurements of glacial and sheet ice has been demonstrated since the early 1960s. The concept for this approach can be traced to 1933 at Admiral Byrd’s base, Little America, Antarctica where the first indication that snow and ice are transparent to high frequency radio signal was observed.
There are advantages and disadvantages to reanalyses for climate study. The main advantages are that global Earth observations (disparate distributions in space and time) are assimilated leading to uniformly gridded and globally available data. Reanalyses also combine many different types of observations into a single analysis.
There are advantages and disadvantages to reanalyses for climate study. The main advantages are that global Earth observations (disparate distributions in space and time) are assimilated leading to uniformly gridded and globally available data. Reanalyses also combine many different types of observations into a single analysis.
We all hear about global this and global that, what to recycle or not, and who should be responsible. This is almost non-stop from every sort of media available, which becomes mind numbing and, in a huge sense, scary. With all the information our there, Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods caught my attention.
How and why does the Sun’s energy change, and how does the Earth respond? We care about these changes, and seek improved understanding of their causes and consequences. We do this because society urgently seeks to quantify anthropogenic and natural causes of climate change, because we are increasingly reliant on the technological benefits of space assets, and because we utilize and explore extensive environmental domains well beyond the surface where we live.