NASA reveals carbon dioxide rising in Earth’s sky

In this regard, NASA is drawing maps documenting carbon dioxide emissions, with the aim of combating climate change.

NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio released a video showing how carbon dioxide emissions were blown around Earth’s atmosphere by winds and air currents, from January to March 2020.

The video reveals individual sources of carbon dioxide, including power plants and forest fires.

“As policymakers and scientists, we try to consider where carbon comes from and how that affects the planet,” said climate scientist Leslie Ott of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Most of the carbon over the United States, South Asia and China comes from industry, power plants and transportation, but over Africa and South America, most emissions come from burning, including forest fires, agricultural burning and land clearing.

The visualizations are based on the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), which uses supercomputers to show what’s happening in the atmosphere.

GEOS relies on billions of data points, including data from the Terra satellite’s MODIS and the Suomi-NPP satellite’s VIIRS instruments.

GEOS has more than 100 times greater accuracy than typical weather models.

Source: Science Alert