What is GISTEMP

Narration: Katy Mersmann

Transcript:

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The Goddard Institute for Space Studies,

or GISS

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for short, maintains NASA's

record of Earth's surface temperature,

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called GISTEMP, that shows a clear and unequivocal

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increase in our planet's temperature.

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GISTEMP stretches from 1880,

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long before NASA's existed,

until the present day.

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Now, when you think of NASA, you

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probably think of, well, space, right?

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And we do lots of work studying Earth from above.

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but the GISTEMP record is actually built from the ground up

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We collect measurements

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taken from weather stations,

Antarctic research stations.

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And ships and ocean buoys

all around the planet to understand

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what temperature changes

look like globally.

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And why does the record start in 1880?

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That's the earliest period that we have sufficiently reliable

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measurements from ships

and weather stations

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in enough places

to be confident in the global record.

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Interestingly, it's also shortly

after the time

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we call the Industrial Revolution.

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when humans started putting significant amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.