Yeah.
It's really it's a it's a really important thing to remember that
NASA studies all the planets, including our home planet of Earth.
It's it's not only does that help us look and understand
other planets, the signatures of life, but the data that we collect
help us understand vegetation, help us understand storms,
help us understand fires.
Those data that we collect about our home planet are incredibly valuable
in tracking change and helping our communities manage
all of the kinds of different hazards that they're facing.
Yeah.
You know, our satellites, we have a fleet of about 20
that tracked different parameters of Earth.
They tell us about everything from surface temperature, how green
the vegetation is, how much water we have under the Earth's surface.
And those have helped us see lots of changes.
We see that the world is getting warmer.
We see changes in growing season length.
We see changes in ice and sea level.
And those long records, those those satellites
that have now been built up over literally decades, that's really helped
us understand how the planet operates as this beautiful, complex system,
but also how that system is changing due to human influences
Yeah.
And the Northwest, we've been tracking record breaking heat.
You guys remember these these horrible heat waves that we've seen
over the past couple of years in major cities
that can be devastating and communities that aren't prepared well.
We don't have the infrastructure built up to handle that kind of heat.
So we're expecting to see, unfortunately, more heat in the future.
That can also lead to extremes like fires.
And so satellite data are really critical in helping us understand
patterns of surface temperature,
patterns of fires, even the smoke that's transported downwind
so that our communities can be better prepared for those kinds of challenges
in the future.
Yeah.
And the Southwest, we know the major challenges are water resources,
that we're getting drier and we're trending in the wrong direction there.
And that can lead to horrible consequences like fires, even compound
disasters like landslides after fires that we've seen in some communities.
So satellite data are really critical in helping us understand the big picture
of those challenges.
They can help us measure water literally below the ground
and in the soil and in deeper in groundwater reservoirs.
They can also help us track the conditions that lead to fires,
help us track fires in there as they're burning and as we,
our communities are charting recovery satellite data
help us there to to understand risks of things like landslides
and more immediate dangers like those posed by smoke and air quality
yeah.
In the southeast, we've seen a lot of trending
towards severe weather, severe storms we know where we're vulnerable
in some coastal areas to effects of hurricanes, tropical storms.
There's a lot of debate
and research going on about whether we expect those systems
to intensify with climate change.
Many scientists believe that we are going to see
a trend towards more intense storms once they form.
And we know that the rising sea levels, which have to do with ice and both water
getting warmer and expanding
that, that makes land falling hurricanes and storms more deadly and more
costly because the water is closer to our communities and where we all live.
So satellite data are giving us a window into all of those things.
They're helping us understand the processes that drive those storms.
They're helping us track ocean temperatures
so that we can be better prepared when we face those kinds of events.
You're in the Northeast.
One of the things we're most concerned about is a trend towards extreme
precipitation events, extreme storms, even winter storms coming late in the season,
which can seem unusual and maybe counterintuitive with climate change.
The warmer conditions that we have globally can act as a fuel
to some of these storms.
Those can be devastating for communities in terms of flooding, flash flooding
when you have very intense rainfall erosion.
So satellite data are helping us track all of those things from from the
formation of the storm through the impacts
of the precipitation and afterwards.
So in the northeast, those are some of the kinds of things
that we're looking out for yes.
In the Midwest, we're seeing a trend towards warmer temperatures
and also more frequent extreme rainfall.
You guys have faced devastating floods over the past few years.
So you remember some of these effects.
That's incredibly important for the people living in the Midwest.
But even more broadly, because there is such a an abundance
of agriculture that really feeds the rest of the country and the world.
So we're tracking both the extreme rainfall events.
We're tracking the formation those storms and very carefully monitoring agriculture
so that we can be prepared both as those storms are happening
and for the larger and longer term impacts of climate change
in the Midwest.
Yeah, it's going to be a busy year.
We've got a lot of new satellites going up and trying
to observe the planet in many different and new and exciting ways.
So that's that's going to be great.
One I'm particularly excited about is a mission called Tempo,
which is going to measure air quality.
It's going to be a geostationary mission, really.
NASA's first geostationary air quality mission, and that's important.
It's a harder measurement to make.
It's harder to get the satellite up very, very high to be in geostationary orbit.
But it's going to give us measurements of air pollutants hourly.
Right now, we're lucky if we can get those measurements once a day.
So being able to track how air pollution changes during the course of a day
with the cycles of things like traffic or sunlight, that's going to be
a game changer for air quality managers in terms of understanding
and predicting episodes that can be very, very harmful to communities.
All across our country.
You can check us out on the Web at NASA.gov Slash Earth Day.
If you go there, you're going to find all kinds of information
about how we're celebrating Earth Day.
There's virtual celebrations that everybody can join in.
There's also a lot of resources there.
If you poke around a little bit,
all of our data are free and publicly accessible.
So you can learn more about
some of the missions we've talked about, even go and view
some of the Earth observations that we've been discussing to you.
So so please take the initiative.
Go ahead and learn a bit more if you can
yeah.
It's important for people to know that even though you might see
natural variability in your community, that's totally normal.
The global trajectory of climate change, the global temperature continues to rise.
So we're still seeing climate change continue.
This is not ended.
This is even if you see a late season snowstorm this is this is still a problem
that we're very much facing across the planet.
So it can be unusual, but it's important to note that late
season storms are actually something we've expected with climate change.
Some of the changes we see at far northern latitudes can actually affect
the position of the jet stream that can even bring a stronger winter
weather further south.
That seems a little counterintuitive, but it's actually something that we've
we've known and expected for a long time with climate change.
So even though you're seeing these changes locally,
that doesn't mean we're off the hook and that climate change
isn't an issue anymore.
Unfortunately,
you know, it's a really important day, I think, to take stock and
look at the world around you and to pause and understand our environment.
This is a day when everybody is trying collectively
to focus on their environment, think about or think about our impacts.
And I think having that time, having that moment of reflection
is really, really important.
It's a time for us to reach out and make sure that what we're doing
isn't just closed off in a lab.
We're not just keeping the results to ourself.
We're actually getting out there and trying to talk to communities
and share some of the things we're learning
so that everybody can benefit from them.
So, you know,
I hope everybody takes that moment to pause, that moment to learn a bit more
and to reflect on how we affect the planet and how it affects us.
Yeah, you know, a lot
of people will look at that that number,
that global temperature number and think, that's not a big deal.
Look, the temperature varies a lot day to day.
What does that even matter
when you think about that, when you think about the mass of heat
that that represents being trapped close to the earth.
So one degree, approximately globally is a whole lot of heat.
And we see
that heat reverberate in many ways throughout the Earth's system right now.
That's heating up the oceans. That affects ocean productivity.
It affects food, it affects sea level rise.
That temperature change is warm enough to melt ice.
That's also contributing to sea level rise,
contributing to change in ecosystems and water availability.
In many parts of the world.
We're seeing changes in growing season and changes in fire frequency
with this amount of warming.
So even though that can seem like a small number,
then when it's averaged over the whole planet, it represents a very big,
very fundamental shift in the way that the planet functions as a system.