[Applause]
Thank you! Our Earth is a water planet
from the oceans, ice, rivers, lakes
and aquifers to the water suspend in our atmosphere,
our Earth is definitely a water planet. Take a look at
our lovely Earth? Did you know that 99.5% of that water
is stored in our salty seas or locked up in glaciers
and other inaccessible locations, leaving precious little fresh water
available to support our life on Earth?
So one of the vital signs of our Earth is the water cycle
and understanding it and knowing it will help us to monitor our
freshwater resources and we can do this by measuring
where, how the water moves within our planet
and I will talk about that today.
This is a cartoon of our water cycle. It shows the
linkages between the surface water, condensation,
precipitation, and evaporation. The water cycle is a
complex system that drives the movement of water and actually
heat and energy around our planet;
let's start by exploring the role of our deep and vast oceans
in the water cycle. As you can see in this visualization
of satellite data, the
ocean surface temperatures are not uniform around the oceans.
The warm waters is in red and the cool waters
is in blue; drive the movement of water and heat
throughout the oceans which can in turn then influence our
weather patterns such as might be saying during El Niño and
La Niña Years. Also, driving the movement of water
in our oceans is salinity. As shown in this
visualization of Aquarius satellite data from NASA
where evaporation occurs, our oceans get saltier,
it's shown in red, where precipitation falls, ice melts
or rivers discharge our oceans get fresher as shown in the
blue. As your ocean water becomes saltier it
becomes more dense and settles down to the bottom of the ocean and
vice versa for the less salty water which rises to the top.
Taken together, surface temperatures,
salinity and also the ocean winds, the winds
above the ocean, combine in a complex stance
that drives the ocean circulation patterns as shown here.
The oceans also store massive amounts of heat
and are very slow to release it which makes them
a major driver in our Earth's climate system.
The oceans and the atmosphere actually
work together. Without the oceans, the water stays
on surface and we need the atmosphere as well.
For example, intense sunlight in the tropics
causes evaporation from the salty oceans
and that water forms in to massive clouds. Those
massive clouds, that are moved by the atmospheric winds to the
mid-latitudes where precipitation occurs either in the form of rain
or snow. The only way to get a global perspective
of precipitation patterns is to measure from spaceborne
platforms. Six months ago NASA and the Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency launched our
joint Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory Satellite
or GPM for short.
With two advanced instruments, the Core Observatory for the first time is able
to measure all phases of precipitation from very, very
heavy rain to light rain to falling snow.
The GPM spacecraft serves as an anchor
to a domestic and international constellation of satellite
partners, which collectively provide precipitation
estimates everywhere in the world every three hours,
in essence taking the pulse of the
planet's precipitation.
This imagery shows one of the very first events
measured by the GPM spacecraft.
It was one of the late-season falling snow events
here in East Coast on March 17. The resulting
7 inches of snow in the Washington DC area may have
affected your St. Patrick's Day plans this year.
Off the coast of the Carolinas, the high cloud tops
are icy, down at the surface heavy rains shown in red
fell in the Atlantic Ocean. Further North, overland,
the storm has much lower cloud tops and they are composed of snow
shown in blue which fell at the surface and we can see this information
because the GPM spacecraft has two advanced instruments;
one of them which I like to call the x-ray through the clouds
measures the precipitation all way through the cloud and provides
what I would call an x-ray at the surface. It's a two-dimensional view of the precipitation.
The other instrument on board is what I like to call
taking a CAT scan of the clouds and it takes layer by layer
within the clouds information about the precipitation that's vital for
helping us to understand precipitation and weather forecasting
and climate models.
So we're very excited about this data. Where else but
NASA with our partners, are we able to achieve
such success so early in the mission. GPM
also uses this data for applications to provide societal
benefit. GPM observes hurricanes and blizzards but as
shown in the top two panels here, we are also able to look at the
conditions that might lead to landslides and floods. On
the other hand for trial and water availability maps as
shown in the bottom two images, we need to know how little it has
precipitated over time and GPM can tell us that too.
Emergency management then can use this data in near real time
to make evacuation plans.
Precipitation in the water cycle influences
every person, every day, everywhere,
may be one of the greatest impacts of NASA's data
is just used in improving weather forecasting models and climate
change models for our everyday lives and our long-term future.
Now I would like introduce Lola who is going to talk about
the pulse of our planet's biosphere.