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[Text on screen] Question 1: This new timelapse shows 20 years of life on Earth. Show us what's happening here.
What
we see for the first time is how
the oceans and the land behave at the same time, through time,
for 20 years. We've never had data like these before.
Half of our photosynthesis occurs in the
oceans and the other half on land, and having these data
to show both at the same time -
day after day, month after month, year after year -
for 20 years is a great tool
to study life on Earth.
[Text on screen] Question 2: What trends has NASA observed over the last two decades of studying life on Earth?
Well, NASA has
observed many aspects of
the coupled land ocean atmosphere system and how
they interact. For example,
we see that with warmer surface temperatures the growing season
is getting longer at higher northern latitudes
and spring is coming earlier. With
satellite data we're able to map this continuously
across the Earth's surface and across the
United States and across Alaska. Before that time
you had rely where you had weather stations, and so
you had point here, points there, but you never had
continuous data like these.
[Text on screen] Question 3: How are the ecosystems changing in the U.S. and North America?
Well,
in the United States with these data we see several
very interesting things. We see in many areas, like in the
southeastern United States, things have been
fairly constant and good overall year after year
in the southeastern U.S. In
Texas we observed very clearly a major
drought in 2010. And in California
and in the pacific northwest we
see the manifestations of drought also very
clearly in 2015, 2016.
So, using these data we can look
over very large areas and see
regional effects and something these
effects are positive and nothing bad has happened.
So it is only with these data we are able to do this
over all these areas at the same time. And this is made possible
by the use of Earth viewing satellites,
which orbit the Earth day after day,
month after month, year after year, and these data are
the basis for saying these things about
Earth with confidence because we measure them.
[Text on screen] Question 4: How is Earth helping us search for life on other worlds?
We have learned from our satellite studies of Earth that we need to look for water
and we need to look for gases in the atmosphere
like carbon dioxide and methane. Because
these gases and water on Earth are fundamental
to life on Earth and we
- if we're looking for life on other planets, that's what we
need to look for.
[Text on screen] Question 5: Where can we learn more?
If you need more information the place to go
is nasa.gov/earth
nasa.gov/earth and there's
a wide variety of information from NASA satellites,
visualizations, a lot of really cool graphics.
That's where you need to go to get more information if you're interested.