James Hansen Interview Transcript

Narration: James Hansen

Transcript:

[James Hansen] Well, the big thing about Glory is it will finally make aerosol measurements with an accuracy that allows you to determine their role in climate change.

The data from Glory is primarily for the purpose of telling us what the mechanisms are that force the climate model--how aerosols are changing and how clouds are changing because of aerosols.

So, the aerosols themselves are a very hard problem because their effect on the planet's radiation balance, their effect on climate forcing, depends upon what altitude they're at, depends upon what size the particles are, and it depends upon whether they absorb sunlight or just reflect it. But, in addition, there's an even harder problem and that's the fact that aerosols have an influence on clouds.

We've had measurements of greenhouse gases, but we haven't measurements accurate enough of the other major forcing, which is aerosols and their effect on clouds.

Given the fact that aerosols have comprable importance to that of greenhouse gases it's about about that we're finally doing it.